Mistress of the Sun

  Petite heard someone cough. She whirled in the dark, her heart racing. She was unstrung, no doubt; she’d been having dream spells again. Yet the cough sounded as if it had come from behind the door to the connecting passage—the door to Athénaïs’s rooms.

  It couldn’t be Athénaïs. The moon was full and it was early in the evening yet. She would be out at the gaming tables. Sometimes Petite heard her and her waiting maid stumbling in after dawn, laughing and cursing.

  Petite pressed her ear against the door’s shellacked surface—the “green door,” as she thought of it, even though it wasn’t green in Paris. She knew how to be quiet and watchful, how to be patient and wait. She knew how to hold stone-still for a long time—this was her skill in hunting—so she held silent, waiting for a sound, but sensed no movement. Clasping her locket—her protection from the Devil—she creaked the door open. She would just have a look, put her fears to rest…and then sleep.

  ATHÉNAÏS’S CHAMBERS WERE a mirror reflection of Petite’s own: an antechamber, a room in which to receive guests, a bedchamber and dressing room, a closet for the maid. Cats skulked out of view as Petite crept into the withdrawing room. Two enormous candles had been left blazing; Athénaïs had a mortal fear of the dark.

  The parrot stood on a gilded base, pecking at a cake. It regarded Petite with one eye.

  “Que diable,” it said—and then coughed.

  Petite leaned against the wall, catching her breath. She should return to her room. She had no right.

  LATE THE FOLLOWING EVENING, long after shutting in, Athénaïs entered Petite’s room unannounced, emerging through the “green door” to ask Petite to tie her ribbons and adjust her gauzy train. Petite rose from a chair, startled. It was past midnight, and she was in her bedclothes. Unable to sleep, she had decided to read the Divine Comedy by the light of a lantern in preparation for talking to Abbé Patin in the morning.

  “Nobody can tie a ribbon as well, darling,” Athénaïs told Petite, giving her a kiss.

  Petite did as requested; she didn’t want a scene. Athénaïs thanked her, said a few words about the masquerade ball coming up and left to join the gaming tables in the Queen’s salon.

  “Who was that?” Clorine asked, coming to the door. The candlelight cast her face in ghoulish shadows.

  Petite raised her lantern and looked about the room. “Clorine, wasn’t there a blue jay’s wing-feather with my ribbons?”

  “The one for your riding hat? It was here.” Clorine smirked. “Let me guess: Madame de Montespan was just here.”

  I could kill her, Petite thought, wondering what else Athénaïs might have taken.

  IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT when Petite opened the door to what she guessed would be Athénaïs’s bed-chamber. Holding her breath, she stepped in, then softly closed the door behind her.

  It was another world, a world of Oriental voluptuousness: India shawls hung from crystal chandeliers, textured wall-panels decorated in chiaroscuro, images of men and women embracing in various states of undress. It was a harlot’s opulent boudoir, flimsy gowns thrown in heaps on the red Turkey carpet, the bedclothes in disorder, everything draped in laced red silk. Yet, it was, in a perverse way, an altar as well, for there were candles burning before crosses, statues, icons. Most everything was silver: a massive silvered bed rested on the backs of two silver lions, its silver bedposts ornamented with white plumes. A silvered sofa covered in tigerskin was set opposite a silvered fire-grate. Even the toilette table was silvered. Lights reflected off all the surfaces like stars on a cloudless night.

  Petite heard the night watchman outside call out one of the clock. She’d come looking for her own things, yet she felt like a thief. She glanced quickly over the clutter on the toilette table, the jars of pomade and power. Candle-grease and ashes were everywhere. Petite picked up a silver coffer: inside was a tangle of jeweled ornaments, a rich rat’s nest of bracelets, armlets and necklets, trinkets of pearl, diamond, emerald and ruby. But no humble wooden rosary, no spangled head-rail, no feather. On the silvered side table close to the bed was a deck of smudged Tarot cards and two half-full glasses of what looked like a spirituous liquor. On the wall, candles dripped wax onto a black enamel cabinet. Petite tugged at its door, but it was locked.

  She startled, thinking she saw something out of the corner of her eye, something on the bed, but then realized it was her own image: the headboard was a mirror. Tangled in the rumpled bedclothes, she saw a small leather whip with a silver handle.

  Mercy. She should never have come. She began to back away, but saw necklaces hanging from a silvered peg: beaded laces, long strands of pearls, rubies, a necklace of gold shells, another of bear’s teeth. There were also two rosaries, one with an ebony cross inlaid with mother-of-pearl, the other with black beads and a silver cross. Petite noticed the pendant Athénaïs often wore—the pendant with the cross and key, hanging from a gold chain.

  The key. Petite unclasped the pendant from the chain. Crouching, she fumbled the silver key into the lock on the black enamel cabinet. It fit, and the mechanism gave way. She swung open the doors to reveal two sliding shelves. She then slid out the top one. There, on a bed of green felt, were locks of hair, a thimble of nail clippings, her head-rail and blue-striped ribbon. There was even a tin bracelet she hadn’t yet missed.

  She sat back on her heels. There was also a man’s silk hose and a diamond-tipped hat pin. Might these be Louis’s? Shoved into the back, she saw a mess of revolting things: a tiny dried-up heart (a bird’s perhaps, she thought) and what looked like a tangle of entrails, small bones.

  Petite slid out the lower shelf. There, behind an ornamental brass box and a paper packet, was her rosary of wooden beads. Mary, I thank you. She kissed it and draped it around her neck. Then she opened the paper packet. A hard blue sweetmeat rolled out. The color was unusual—and then she remembered: Athénaïs had given her one, just before she miscarried. Just before she almost died.

  Trembling now, Petite opened the heavy brass box. Ashes? She put it to one side, took out the packet and securely locked the cabinet. With the pendant and packet in one hand and the brass box in the other she crept out.

  “Damnation!” the parrot squawked as she groped her way back through the rooms.

  PETITE’S BEDCHAMBER SMELLED refreshingly of the apple logs she burned in winter. The moon cast bright squares of light on the bare floor. Athénaïs would never know she’d been into her rooms: the cabinet was locked, and now she had the key. Nevertheless, she pushed a chair against the door and, shivering, placed the pendant, the brass box and the packet behind the four leather volumes of Virgil in the bookcase next to her prie-dieu. After a prayer—in gratitude, in fear—she returned to her big bed, curling up under the covers, clasping her father’s rosary to her throat.

  “THANK GOD, YOU’RE HERE,” Petite said, taking Abbé Patin’s hands.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve been having…it’s like a trembling of my heart. Palpitations, the doctor calls it.” Her courage was failing her now. At Mass, sitting with Athénaïs (as was the custom), she’d dared to hold the wood-bead rosary in her hands. Athénaïs had stared.

  “Tell me what this is about,” Abbé Patin said, leading Petite to a chair and sitting down in the seat opposite.

  Petite wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. “Remember I told you I almost died?”

  “Yes,” he said, “you saw your father.”

  “What I didn’t tell you,” Petite said, “was that shortly before I got so sick, I’d been with child. I…lost it.”

  “And as a result you got sick?”

  “Yes, but not exactly.” Petite withdrew her father’s rosary from her skirt pocket. Running the wooden beads through her fingers, she told Abbé Patin about Athénaïs giving her a comfit just before she lost the baby. “I went to the market this morning, before Mass, to consult with an herbalist there. She told me that the comfit contained chamaepitys—ground pine.”

  “Ah.”

/>   “You know the herb?” The herbalist had recognized it immediately as an abortive, one of Madame la Voisin’s “remedies.”

  “I do.” He grimaced. “It’s strong. It can kill a woman, as well as—”

  “I know.”

  Petite went to her bookcase and took down the volumes of Virgil. She placed the brass box on the table in front of the Abbé. “Tell me what you make of this.”

  He picked it up and examined it. “I believe it’s from Saint-Séverin church,” he said, indicating the double S’s in the intricate design of the lid.

  Petite nodded. She’d thought so, too. “It was in Madame de Montespan’s possession.”

  From somewhere outside, a woman was singing the “Hymn of Adoration”: “Let all mortal flesh keep silence…”

  Hesitantly, he opened it. “Ashes,” he said, touching the contents with his finger, then sniffing it. Wiping his finger on his cassock, he made the sign of the cross three times, then replaced the lid and sat back, frowning.

  “Human ashes, the herbalist thought,” Petite said. “Although of course she couldn’t be sure.”

  “I didn’t want to say, but yes, possibly, and—” He regarded the box with a look of uneasiness. “And likely from a Black Mass.”

  Petite covered her face with her hands. As a child, she had imagined the Devil as a monster with a scaly tail and pointed teeth. She had never guessed that the Devil might lurk in the cold, calculating heart of a beautiful woman.

  “Have you informed His Majesty?” Abbé Patin asked.

  “I’m to see him shortly.” Petite doubted that Louis would listen. He had changed. Was it possible that Athénaïs was spinning enchantments around him even now? “I’ve been suffering attacks of ill health, and now I can’t help but wonder if…” If Athénaïs was slowly poisoning her.

  “You must be cautious,” Abbé Patin said. “You are in a time of danger, of high emotion. This is the Devil’s realm.”

  PETITE SLIPPED ON HER dressing gown and walked behind where Louis was relaxing on the silk-covered couch of ease. He’d taken his pleasure of her: now was the time. “Louis, there’s something I need to tell you—something you should be aware of,” she said, leaning over him, her arms around him.

  “I’m not going to like this, am I?” he said, tilting his head back to look at her.

  No, she thought. She came around and sat beside him. He’d developed wrinkles, frown lines, hints of gray. “Please, hear me out.” She thought of the “Plaisirs de l’Île Enchantée” festival at Versaie, thought of the performance of the innocent knight battling the evil sorceress. She thought of the knight’s ring, the ring with the power to destroy enchantment. If only she had such a ring now.

  “I hope this hasn’t to do with the White,” he said. “We’ve been over all that before.”

  “No,” Petite said forlornly. Diablo had refused to service three mares, and now, rather than having him shot and fed to dogs, the master of the horse wanted to pit him against a pride of lions, for public entertainment. “This goes back to when I was last with child. I ate something, a comfit. Then I lost the baby and almost died.”

  Louis nodded. “You never mentioned a comfit.”

  “I had an herbalist test one,” she said, taking the woolen shawl from the arm of the couch and draping it around her shoulders. “It contains chamaepitys, an abortive.”

  Louis tilted his head to one side. “So you think that maybe that was why…?”

  “Yes: why I lost the child.”

  “And this is what you thought I wouldn’t want to hear?”

  “Louis, Athénaïs gave me that comfit.”

  He stiffened. “Are you suggesting she intentionally gave you something to make you abort?”

  Petite nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said. “A poison that near killed me.”

  “That’s absurd,” he said, standing.

  “Louis,” Petite said, looking up at him, imploring. His face had rounded over time. His eyes, once inquiring and curious, had taken on a hard certainty. He wore his authority like a mask. “Athénaïs came at me with a knife,” she said evenly, trying to stay calm. “You were there. How can you say it’s absurd?”

  “Athénaïs has rages,” he said, pacing now. “She’s a passionate woman—but blowing up in a temper is not the same thing as giving someone poison.”

  “Louis, please listen to me. She’s practicing black magic—”

  “Have you lost your senses?” His lips turned down with ironic contempt.

  “—on you!”

  “You are not to speak of such things, do you understand? I forbid it!” He raised his fist—a threat—then pressed it against his forehead in frustration. “You must abide,” he said, his voice tremulous. “Athénaïs loves you like a sister.”

  Petite made a noise through her nose, a sound of contempt.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you make her sound like a devil.” The door slammed shut behind him.

  Petite sat for a time in the silence, her trembling fingers resting on the cold marble top of her vanity. She heard the voice faintly sing, “…and with fear and trembling stand.”

  It’s over, she thought. The finality of that realization gave her strength. There was only one path now, and she knew the way.

  She stood and picked up the small blue jar, opened it. It was dry, as dry as the single leaf on the twig wedged into the mirror frame. She broke off the leaf and crumbled it. Then she opened her wooden keepsake box and withdrew the moth-eaten scarf. She used it to dry her tears before throwing it into the fire.

  THE NURSERY WING of the Colbert household was even more chaotic than usual. There was to be a Mardi Gras fete at the house that afternoon, and the children were in a flurry of anticipation. Madame Colbert asked her daughter, eleven now, to take the toddler and two girls upstairs to listen to their brothers at their singing lessons, and quiet suddenly descended upon the sunny nursery littered with crowns, masks and lacy petticoats.

  “You look handsome, Monsieur l’Admiral,” Petite told her son. The three-year-old stood self-consciously in his costume: the cap, breeches and cape of an admiral. She shook Tito’s hand formally. He appeared anxious about his sudden promotion into the adult world.

  “Watch, Mother,” Marie-Anne called out. She twirled about the room in her faerie costume, then staggered to a halt. She frowned down at her feet, and shifted them into a more orderly third position.

  “Quiet now, Mademoiselle Marie-Anne,” Madame Colbert said. “You’ll wear yourself out before the party.” Marie-Anne ran to her, clutching Madame Colbert around her ample waist. “Would you like to tell your mother what you did yesterday?” Madame Colbert asked, clucking like a pleased mother hen.

  “You tell,” the girl said.

  “Marie-Anne allowed us to put her on a pony,” Madame Colbert boasted.

  “The one that bites,” Marie-Anne said.

  “Oh, only nibbles,” Madame Colbert said, smiling down at the child. “And only now and then.” She stroked the girl’s head. “A bit fearful,” she mouthed to Petite.

  “What did you say?” Marie-Anne looked up at Madame Colbert.

  “What did you say, Madame Colbert,” Madame Colbert instructed.

  “What did you say, Madame Colbert?” Marie-Anne grinned up at her, the fingers of one hand in her mouth.

  “I said that you are riding quite well,” Madame Colbert said, taking the girl’s hand out of her mouth.

  “You did not. Madame Colbert.”

  “I love your costume,” Petite told her daughter.

  “It sparkles,” Tito said, solemnly watching.

  “With diamonds,” Marie-Anne said.

  “Not real diamonds,” Madame Colbert told her.

  “What are you going to be?” Marie-Anne asked her mother, sucking on her fingers again.

  “What are you going to be, Mother,” Madame Colbert said.

  “I’m going to be an angel,” Petite said. Was going to be. “Are you cold, Monsieur l’Admiral?
” she asked little Tito. The child was bent over double, rubbing his bare lower legs. It seemed strange not to see him in a long gown and traces.

  “No,” he said.

  “That means yes,” Madame Colbert whispered, taking a seat and pulling Marie-Anne onto her lap. She shifted to make room for the boy as well, her arms encircling them both. “Such big babies now.”

  “Jeanne’s baby Albert is one year old,” Marie-Anne announced, leaning back against Madame Colbert’s soft bosom.

  “One year, two months.” Madame Colbert beamed at the mention of her first grandchild. “And fat as a quail.”

  “Poupée is married now and will have babies too,” the girl said.

  Madame Colbert raised her brows. “That’s what we pray for.” The second eldest Colbert daughter—nicknamed “Doll”—had married only a month before.

  “Mother is married,” Tito said.

  “She’s not,” Marie-Anne said.

  “She is,” the boy persisted. “To our father the King.”

  “No.” Marie-Anne was insistent. “She’s like a…a strumpet.”

  “Marie-Anne!” Madame Colbert shook the girl. “What a thing to say.”

  Petite put her hand on Madame Colbert’s arm. “Please.” It had happened so quickly. She looked into her children’s faces. They were too young to understand. “I want you both to know that I love you very much…and that you have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “The finest mother in the world,” Madame Colbert exclaimed, and—seeing that Petite was in danger of weeping—she ushered the two children into the care of a nursemaid. “There now,” she said, joining Petite at the window. “How about I ring for a hot cordial?”

  “Thank you, but no—I must be going.”

  “Yes, of course—there’s the masquerade ball tonight. I confess that I rather prefer staying home with the children.”

  “I take great comfort in your care of them, Marie,” Petite said, tearfully embracing her. She could hear the older boys’ voices in their singing lesson, the laughter of children, footsteps on the floor above. “They couldn’t have a finer home.”