Mistress of the Sun

  “Some believe that the Devil looks and acts like a goat, but he is rarely so playful. His heart is full of jealous suspicion, and the best way to recognize him, if he is in human form, is to look into his eyes, which are cold, without love or scruple.”

  Petite wiped the slate clean and wrote, crumbling the end of the chalk-stone: Could the Devil ride a horse away?

  Sister Angélique took the slateboard from Petite and examined the words her niece had written. “Did something happen to you, my little angel?” she asked finally, setting the stone slab down carefully, as if it were fragile.

  Petite shook her head.

  “Are you sure? You can trust me.”

  Petite nudged the slate toward her aunt, her eyes imploring.

  “Well…” Sister Angélique pressed the palms of her hands together. “You mean the way a witch will ride a night-mare?”

  Petite nodded, tearing.

  “Well, then, yes, I suppose he could. There’s nothing the Devil can’t do—but love, of course. He can’t do that, even if he wants to.”

  FRANÇOISE DE LA VALLIÈRE promised her daughter that she would come to visit every year on the sixth of August, the anniversary of Petite’s birth. And she did, in spite of considerable hardship. The first year, the year her daughter turned eight, it was humid and hot, so scorching that the horse could barely pull the wagon. The second year, the year Petite turned nine, Françoise arrived in spite of a violent thunderstorm. But the third year she didn’t arrive until the early days of September—a full month late.

  “I’ve been to Blois,” Françoise explained, examining her daughter, who had grown but was still small for her age. “You’re too thin. Are they feeding you?” she demanded, as Sister Angélique and the Prioress appeared behind the grille. “My daughter has been here three years,” she informed the two nuns, “yet she’s still not speaking.” She intentionally made her tone accusing. If there was fault, it would best be theirs.

  “We’ve had your daughter examined, as you know, Madame,” the Prioress said. “The problem is not with her throat or her tongue.”

  “She’s far too quiet for a ten-year-old.” Being silent was an important female virtue (along with chastity, piety and humility), but not speaking at all was another matter altogether. “Are you feeding her?”

  “You need not concern yourself on that account, Françoise,” Sister Angélique said. “The fig comfits on the side table were freshly made this morning. There are a few sugar-plums left, as well.”

  The Prioress leaned forward on her cane, a bent stick with a gold knob. “Madame de la Vallière, your daughter was silent when you brought her.”

  Françoise held her tongue. The Prioress was tough as a pine knot. She imagined her as a pure-finder, collecting dung from the streets as something nasty got thrown on her out a window.

  “Her mastery of letters is outstanding,” Sister Angélique said, “and her quillwork delicate. As for her mind, she’s exceptionally quick. She reads Latin, and even a little Greek now. I’ve never seen a child so—” The nun smiled over at Petite, who was sitting quietly by the window. “So bright.”

  “What use is all that if she’s to marry?” Françoise demanded. Nuns had no understanding of the world, her deceased husband’s sister in particular. “I made it clear from the beginning that my daughter was to be groomed to marry a nobleman.” Once she started talking again, that is. Surely.

  “The life of a Religious might suit her,” Sister Angélique suggested. “She is sincerely devout.”

  The Prioress gave her a warning glance.

  Françoise paced in front of the smoldering embers, rubbing her arms for warmth. Much as she hated to admit it, her late husband’s sister had a point. Perhaps a convent would be a solution. “Is that your wish, Louise? Would this life appeal to you?”

  Petite wrote out on her slateboard: It is my wish.

  Françoise turned to the grille. “How much would be required for my daughter to become a nun?” In addition to the dowry, there would be an entrance fee, the cost of a habit, a bed and various other furnishings, not to mention the expense of the feast on the bridal day and the fee for the priest who preached the sermon.

  “It is not entirely a question of money,” the Prioress said as the black-guard boy came in with an armful of wood and dumped it onto the embers. “The girl is devout, no doubt, but there is a fine line between devotion and obsession, and we’ve had some—” She waited for the boy to shut the door behind him. “Some difficulties, in the past,” she said.

  Françoise nodded. Years earlier, one of the nuns had begun to hear noises and see things at night. The Duc d’Orléans, the King’s uncle, had come from Blois to expel the demon himself.

  “As a result, we’ve learned to be cautious.”

  “But that was long before my daughter even came to this place.”

  “A postulant must be sound in both mind and body.”

  “Perhaps a cure can be found,” Sister Angélique suggested, her voice tearful.

  PETITE LAY LONG in her narrow bed that night, listening to the wind. She loved the silence of the convent, the heady swirl of contemplation and study, the daily euphoria of choir, Mass, prayer. She felt safe in this place; the Devil was not present. She knew that now. It is my wish, she thought.

  PETITE WAS READING Compendium of the Nicomachean Ethic in the scriptorium when a lay nun informed her that her mother awaited her in the visitors’ parlor. She closed the codex, considering. It was winter now, and her mother came only in the full heat of summer; she wasn’t expected for another six months. Has something happened to my brother Jean? Petite wondered, hurrying down the dark passages.

  Françoise stood in the parlor window, striped by the dim shafts of light thrown through the bars. Dust motes swirled all around her as she fingered a single strand of pearls. She was wearing a fine Brussels head lace with a tucker to match.

  Petite curtsied to the Prioress and Sister Angélique, sitting behind the grille, and then kissed her mother’s powdered cheeks. She smelled sweetly of vanilla.

  “You still walk with a limp,” Françoise observed. “What about that surgeon who uses pulleys and weights? I paid him to pull you straight.”

  Sister Angélique looked chagrined. “The sessions were painful, Françoise. The girl could not bear it—”

  “Is this true, Louise?”

  Petite took the slateboard attached by a rope to her waist and began to write out an answer.

  Françoise turned to the nuns. “My daughter’s still not speaking? I paid a small fortune for special Masses.”

  “But only once a month,” the Prioress observed, hooking her cane on the grille. “Once a week is more effective, as I previously advised you.”

  “This convent is not to get a sou more out of me. My daughter is coming home.”

  Petite looked up in alarm.

  “But—” Sister Angélique pressed her hands over her mouth.

  “You see”—Françoise smiled as she pulled up her lace gloves—“there has been a change of plans. I’ve accepted a proposal of marriage—from a marquis.”

  Part II

  CONFESSION

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS NOISY on the street outside the convent. Cart and carriage wheels grated on the icy cobblestones. A hawker with a deep voice called out, selling meat pies and oatcakes. Three snarling dogs encircled a goat as a milking maid tried to beat them off with a stick. Two chimney sweeps stood by laughing. Petite looked for the sun, but it was blocked by tall houses.

  “Come along, Louise,” Françoise said as a man handed her into the hired carriage.

  Petite climbed up and wiped the seat before sitting down beside her mother. She turned up the torn leather window-covering and looked back at the gateway to the convent. There, behind the decorative ironwork cherubs, stood her aunt. The carriage jolted forward. Petite pressed her hands against her heart.

  As they headed north, the sun cast long shadows over the glittering winter fi
elds. Petite squinted against the glare. She recognized some of the landmarks—a tower windmill, a graveyard—yet they seemed foreign to her now. She hadn’t been out of the convent for four years.

  “He’s César de Courtarvel, Marquis de Saint-Rémy,” her mother told her, positioning her feet on the foot-warmer, “chief steward to the Duc d’Orléans at the château at Blois.”

  Petite didn’t know what to make of this information. Blois was some distance away, yet she knew it was good for her mother to marry a titled gentleman. Her father had tried to become a marquis, but had failed. Now her mother would no longer be addressed familiarly as “mademoiselle,” no longer suffer the disrespect of being married to an untitled man.

  “He’s an older gentleman, a widower himself. He will be a good father for you and Jean.”

  Petite looked out the carriage window. Three heavy horses stood against the wind. One was a black, like old Hongre. She recalled riding behind her father as he went about his doctoring. She remembered leaning her cheek against the cold leather of his doublet, singing hymns in harmony with him as they ambled down the laneways. She didn’t want another father.

  “He might even be able to get Jean a position through his contacts at Court.”

  Her brother needed a father to help him make his way in the world, Petite knew, and she also understood that her mother couldn’t live alone. Only witches and women of another sort lived without the protection of a husband or father.

  “We’ll be moving to Blois after the ceremony. I’ll have you fitted for a proper gown. I need to find you a personal maid to keep you tidy and well turned-out. I’m sure the Marquis will be able to get you a position as waiting maid to one of the princesses. A good maid is silent, so one who doesn’t talk at all might be considered advantageous.” Françoise patted Petite’s knee. “And who knows? Maybe he will even be able to find a husband for you some day.”

  They passed through the village and crossed the narrow bridge. The lower gardens on the opposite bank lay fallow. Petite’s eyes filled as they pulled through the gates into the manor yard.

  An old man hobbled from the wood shed, wrapped in woolens. The carriage rolled to a stop and Petite climbed down.

  “Upon my soul—Mademoiselle Petite?” The ploughman leaned on a stout walking stick. He reached out one arm and embraced Petite, enveloping her in scents of damp wool and smoke. “What am I going to call you now? You’re not so petite anymore—but pretty as ever, aye. Come now, won’t you give us a word?”

  Petite willed her mouth to open, but her tongue remained inert, as if under a spell.

  “Louise, aren’t you coming?” her mother called from the porch.

  “Mind your mother, lass.”

  Petite sprinted across the yard. Inside, the manor smelled familiarly of tallow-candle grease. Embers were smoldering in the sitting room fireplace, the muzzle of the leather bellows tipped against the grate. The furniture had been changed. There used to be a bed in one corner, for company.

  “I got one hundred thirty-five livres for it,” Petite’s mother said, removing her hooded cape, “and twenty-eight for the carpet.” The gold Turkey rug had been replaced by one of knotted wool.

  What else is missing? Petite wondered, alarmed. What else gone? The walls looked bare. Only the black-framed mirror remained.

  “And seven hundred eighty for the tapestries.”

  The door to her father’s study was open. The desk was there, but the shelves looked empty.

  “Where does this go?” the driver demanded, standing in the entrance with Petite’s trunk on his shoulders.

  “Louise, show him to your room,” Françoise said, pulling aside the red camlet curtains to let in light.

  Petite climbed the narrow spiral stairs, the driver behind her hefting her trunk. At the second landing, she stepped into her garret room under the eaves. Her red-canopied oak bed was covered with the familiar red and black striped wool blanket. There, as before, was the little servant bed at the far end, under the eaves. There the trestle table, there the trunks for the maids. She went to the window. There, the farmyard, and there…the barn.

  She turned away.

  “Here, I suppose?” the driver asked, setting down her trunk and shoving it against the wall next to the others.

  PETITE SAT BOLT UPRIGHT in her bed, her heart pounding. Something had woken her. Was the Devil in the room? Then she heard it again: a horse’s scream. Trembling, she pulled back the bed curtain. The night air was chill. Her bonnet had slipped off her head in the night—she found it tangled in her bed linens and pulled it back on.

  Again, she heard the horse. It was not a cry of pain, or fear, or even a cry of loneliness. It was an angry cry, a cry of protest—and it both thrilled and alarmed her.

  It seemed to be coming from the barn. Petite reached for the shawl draped on the wooden ladder-chair by her bed and tiptoed to the narrow window. A crescent moon hung in the sky, illuminating the wisps of fog that lay over the dark fields. In the paddock at the side of the barn, the weak moonlight vaguely shone on the two cart horses standing together. A rooster crowed.

  Picking up her wooden sabots with one hand and the night candle with the other, Petite slipped out the door, down the spiral stairs and through the sitting room, passing down the narrow passageway to the kitchen. She tiptoed around the yellow painted table, taking care not to wake Blanche, asleep on her pallet by the chimney. The bolt clanged as she slid it open. The maid stirred in her sleep, then fell to steady breathing. Petite stepped into her sabots and quietly closed the door behind her.

  The ground was frosty; iced puddles cracked under her weight. She made her way slowly, holding one hand around the flame to protect it. It guttered and then steadied as she approached the barn. She pushed the door gently, testing it. It swung open.

  She stood for a long moment in that familiar space, her eyes adjusting to the gloom. Her heart caught when she saw the shape of something white moving in the far stall, but it was only Vachel, the milk cow. A simple wooden cross had been nailed to the wall—at the spot where her father had died, she realized. Backing away, she tipped over a hoe.

  “Saint Michel, defend me!” The old ploughman rose up from one of the grain bins. Trembling, holding onto the bin, he held up a metal cross. “Safeguard me against the Devil!”

  “It’s me,” Petite croaked, her voice husky, strange.

  “Saint Michel! I beseech you, cast Satan into Hell. Amen!”

  Petite held her candle to her face. “It’s me, Petite,” she said. Her tongue felt like a live thing in her mouth.

  “Mademoiselle?” The ploughman staggered forward, draped in ragged furs, oats spilling from him. “You…talked?”

  Petite’s candle guttered, then went out, and she was plunged into darkness. She felt something prickling at her ankles and thought she heard a hissing sound. She turned, fumbling for the barn door. Outside, she broke down and wept—shattering, gut-wrenching sobs. “I heard a horse,” she told the ploughman, who had followed her. She’d heard Diablo.

  “Mademoiselle Petite,” the old man said, uneasily patting her heaving shoulder, “you’ll catch your death out here. Come into the barn.”

  “No,” Petite gasped.

  “There, there.” Smoke curled from the kitchen chimney. “Mademoiselle Blanche must be up.” He led Petite by the hand to the manor kitchen, now warmed by a crackling fire. “She can talk now,” he told the kitchen maid.

  “Can she now,” Blanche said, her one eye wide. She had lost several teeth since Petite had last seen her.

  “Go on, Mademoiselle,” the ploughman said.

  Petite stared. Behind Blanche, next to the pantry, was her father’s old suit of armor, now hung with aprons. The dog’s basket wasn’t in its usual spot by the fire: her father’s old hound must have died, she feared.

  “Hot cider or a beer? I don’t have all day,” Blanche said, as bossy as ever.

  “Cider,” Petite said finally, her voice foreign to her yet, as if a
spirit were speaking through her.

  “Louise?” Françoise came into the kitchen carrying a night lamp. Her face was covered in a thick paste. “What are you doing in here? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “She talked, Madame,” Blanche said. “She just told me she wants a cider.”

  Françoise looked at Petite with astonishment. “Is that what you said, a cider?”

  Petite nodded.

  “Say something for your mother. Go on, show her,” the ploughman said.

  “Thank you,” Petite said as Blanche handed her a steaming earthenware bowl.

  “Praise Mary.” Françoise smiled. “And perfect timing. A gentleman is bringing a maid for you this afternoon, Louise, and it wouldn’t do for her to think you simple.”

  THE MAN ARRIVED on a donkey at midday, the maid (his sister) riding pillion behind him. They were shown into the sitting room, where Petite and her mother sat waiting in the two fringed armchairs.

  “She is Mademoiselle Clorine Goubert of Tours,” the man said, rocking on his heels. “She served as a fille de suite—or suivante, as they say in Paris—to a gentlewoman for eleven years, the wife of a magistrate, so she knows all about dressing hair and arranging a woman’s toilette.”

  Petite glanced at the woman. She was tall, practical and strong-looking, in spite of the fussy gray taffeta gown she was wearing. Her teeth looked good, with only one missing. She had a pleasing horselike face.

  “She is older than I expected, Monsieur,” Françoise said.

  “She is just above thirty years, but in health, I assure you. Unwed, and of an age not to be susceptible to notions.”

  “Why was her former employment terminated?”

  The man looked perplexed.

  “My mistress died, Madame de la Vallière,” the maid spoke up, bending her knee in a curtsy. Her voice was steady and matter-of-fact. “Of broke ribs. She insisted I tie her traces tight and I do what I’m told—except, you should know, I would not permit it for a growing girl, for it would deform the bones, which are soft until the fifteenth year. A training corset is another matter, however, for it would get her to sit straight—”