Mistress of the Sun

by Sandra Gulland

  “His Majesty is bringing the Dauphin?” Petite asked, stunned by this revelation. And Marie-Anne was to be there? Mercy.

  “He wishes it known that this is a state occasion,” Gautier said, meaning full Court dress.

  Petite had just come from an early morning ride and was in her chevalier ensemble. It had been a leisurely outing (because of her condition), but a wind had come up and her hair was disordered. She rang for Clorine: “His Majesty will be here in under an hour. We’re to welcome him in full Court dress.”

  “Zut!”

  The situation wasn’t as dire as Petite initially had thought. Her wig had been curled and dressed only two weeks before and was presentable. Clorine stripped Petite out of her soiled riding habit and brought her a lacy shift, stockings and decency skirt. Petite chose a brocade girdle embroidered in gold thread and embellished with tiny pearls.

  “How many petticoats?” Clorine asked, pulling Petite’s shift straight before tightening the cord so that the lace border of the shift lay straight at her neckline.

  With the long train, the gown and underskirt were heavy. “One silk,” Petite told her, putting the wig on and then taking it off. It was hot and she had her face to put on yet.

  Her face: her scowling face. The last thing she’d expected, much less prepared for, was an official visit from His Majesty. It was Louis she longed to see—not the King.

  Madame Colbert arrived as Clorine was helping Petite into her gown, a pearl-embellished gold and silver confection. The hefty matron was flushed from the exertion of climbing the stairs in a heavy ensemble of green velvet. Even the nursemaid carrying Marie-Anne was wearing brocade, and Marie-Anne herself was adorned in a tiny gown of embroidered silk.

  “I’m almost ready,” Petite said, shaking out her skirts. She kissed Marie-Anne on the nose. “How is my princess?” She made a funny face at the baby, but Marie-Anne was having none of it. “She looks sleepy.”

  “We had to wake her from a nap,” Madame Colbert said. “Do you know what this is about?”

  “All I’ve been told is that His Majesty is bringing the Dauphin,” Petite said.

  “Blessed Mary, Mother of God,” Madame Colbert said.

  Petite sat down at her toilette table and looked into the glass. No, she would not wear paint. She was flushed from her morning ride: Louis had always liked her best that way. (She wondered if that was still the case.) “Just the wig,” she told Clorine.

  Trumpets announced the royal party as Clorine was putting on Petite’s pearls. Marie-Anne began to fuss, spitting up onto her gown. The nursemaid gave her a white candy stick to suck, which quieted her.

  How should we arrange ourselves? Petite wondered, standing. She took the baby into her arms and led the way into the sitting room. Marie-Anne dropped the candy stick, fussing as the nursemaid rummaged in her sack for another one. Both Petite and Madame Clorine were trying to appease her when Louis entered with his son. They were followed by the boy’s tutor, Gautier, Lauzun and three guards, all in full dress.

  The Dauphin was over five years old and had yet to be breeched, in spite of his inordinate size. He was controlled by two traces, held by his tutor.

  Petite made a reverence as best she could while holding a squirming Marie-Anne in her arms.

  Louis whispered something to Gautier, who came up to Petite. “His Majesty wishes the Princess to be introduced to his son.”

  “Yes,” Petite said, but unsure. “Am I to carry the Princess to His Majesty?” she asked Gautier under her breath. The King and his son were only two sword lengths away, yet it seemed a great distance.

  Marie-Anne began to whimper. Petite slipped a finger into the baby’s mouth for her to suck on.

  “Perhaps it would be best if you did the honors, Madame la Duchesse,” Gautier said, bowing and stepping back.

  Jollying the baby, Petite stepped forward and curtsied before Louis and his son.

  Louis looked down at the boy. “This is your sister,” he told him. “Her name is Marie-Anne. And this is your sister’s mother, Madame Louise, the Duchesse de Vaujours.”

  The boy looked up at his father, confused.

  I know how he feels, Petite thought, smiling at the child. She tried to catch Louis’s eye: there was so much she wanted to say. She felt trapped, as if they were players on a stage and confined to a script.

  “We must go now,” Louis informed his party. Everyone parted to make room. He looked again at Petite, then strode over to her. His back to his son, his entourage, he said, his voice low, “I’m sorry, Louise. The Queen, she’s—” He made an expression of fatigue. “In time…”

  Petite nodded, her eyes filling. “I understand.”

  “I promise you: it won’t be a long campaign.”

  PETITE WATCHED FROM a window as the Court prepared to depart, watched as the Queen was handed into her coach, followed by Athénaïs and several other members of the Queen’s household. She watched as Louis, on horseback, laughed with Lauzun and two of his musketeers. She closed the shutters, pulled the drapes. When, at last, there was silence—no more sounds of horses, carriage wheels, voices—she rang for Clorine.

  “My walking boots,” she said. “And my hooded cape.”

  She walked out into the fields, alone. She stood for a time, leaning against a chestnut tree, gaining solace in the company of the foals and broken-down nags left behind, the horses unsuitable for show or war. I’ve been left behind, she thought, with bitterness in her heart. The curious horses surrounded her, shaking their heads against the flies. A yearling took a nervous step forward. Petite extended her hand.

  Chapter Thirty

  IT WAS EARLY FALL by the time the King returned to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He’d been away five months. The people went mad rejoicing. All summer there had been news of battles won, one upon another. Charleroi, Tournai, Courtrai, Douai, Lille—the towns and cities of the Spanish Netherlands had fallen before the King like a house of cards. He was valiant, young and handsome—but most of all he was victorious. The days of glory had arrived.

  A hundred trumpets announced His Majesty. Fire rockets flared from the towers of the ancient château, banners were unfurled and mint and chamomile strewn over the cobbles. Louis, his wavy hair long, his bearing regal, entered the central courtyard gambading on an Andalusian great horse of unusual height. The gold and semiprecious stones on its caparison glittered as the horse reared up, then kicked out, performing caprioles and levades. He waved his feathered hat to the cheering crowds. He had the air of a man who had faced battle and emerged the victor, a man who had tested his mettle and found it strong.

  Petite watched the welcoming celebrations from a window above. She was big with child now, and preferred to stay out of the public eye. “I’d best be back in my chamber,” she told Clorine. “His Majesty will soon be calling.”

  LOUIS ARRIVED ACCOMPANIED by four pages and two musicians, who immediately took up their lutes and began to play. The pages, wide-eyed boys in red-feathered hats, gawked at Petite.

  “You’ve been well, Louise?” He leaned forward to kiss her cheek—the chaste kiss of a brother or friend. He was wearing a collared red velvet cloak trimmed with gold braid.

  There was something different in his manner, Petite thought, something bold—a polished and gallant confidence she’d not seen in him before. “Yes, quite,” she said, her hands on her hard, taut belly. “And you?” She longed to be alone with him.

  “Splendid,” he said, pacing the room, examining it as if he’d never seen it before. He picked up a book, opened it, then put it back.

  “Congratulations on your victories,” Petite said, watching uneasily as he lifted the blue jar on her toilette table. He took the top off and sniffed it. At the sound of a child’s voice, he set it down.

  “Our Princess,” Petite said with a smile, turning as Clorine came into the room holding Marie-Anne. The ten-month-old plunged four fingers of her right hand into her mouth, her big eyes taking in the strange men in the room—the
strange man in the center.

  “And who have we here?” Louis said, his hands on his hips. His stance was that of a musketeer, but his voice was tender, charmed.

  The girl clung to Clorine’s neck.

  Petite took her from her maid. “There, now,” she said, holding the child close. “She’s become shy,” she told Louis, dancing gently to soothe her.

  Marie-Anne quieted, her head nestled against Petite’s heart, sucking her thumb. “King?” She pointed a wet finger.

  Louis laughed.

  “Your father,” Petite whispered, nuzzling the girl and kissing her, cherishing her.

  AFTER THE BIRTH of a son, little Louis (affectionately called Tito, the name a Spanish nursemaid had called Louis when he was a baby), Petite was again bedridden, unable to go with the Court for a weeklong festival at Versaie.

  “Why don’t you go to Madame Voisin?” Athénaïs suggested. “Don’t be rolling your eyes. You never know.”

  “Using enchantments is dangerous, Athénaïs.”

  “Ah, yes: the Devil and all that,” she said with a laugh. “You make it sound so ominous. One would think you were a member of the Holy League. The powder you tried made you sick, certainly, but it hardly killed you.”

  Petite flushed. She shouldn’t have admitted to Athénaïs her foolish (and desperate) experiment with the passion powder Nicole had given her. “I’m serious. One never knows where it will lead.”

  “I know perfectly well where it leads: to riches. The spell Voisin designed for me worked. It was just some silly ritual to help my husband get a position—and voilà—soon after, His Majesty awarded him the company of light cavalry in the south.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Petite said weakly, unable to reveal that Monsieur le Marquis de Montespan’s promotion was due to her own intervention, in fact.

  IT SEEMED THAT Petite was always looking for something: she’d misplaced a ribbon, her favorite pomade. The Court was so often on the move it was hard to keep track. She was looking through her trunks, trying to gather her things in preparation for the Court’s upcoming trip to Chambord, when Clorine burst in.

  “Monsieur de Montespan attacked his wife,” she said breathlessly, putting down a basket of clean shifts.

  “What do you mean, attacked her?” Petite had seen Athénaïs that very morning. She reached for the rosary, usually draped around the statue of the Virgin on the prie-dieu, but it wasn’t there. (Yet another thing missing, out of place.)

  “Just that. He pulled her by the hair and struck her. It took four men to pull him off.”

  “Get my cloak and boots, Clorine.”

  “She’s gone into hiding—in Paris, her laundress thinks.”

  Shortly after, Louis called. He was distracted, busy preparing for the Court’s long trip to Chambord—and now this.

  “Can nothing be done to protect her?” Petite took his sword, his wet hat and cape. Her health had returned—blessedly—and she had begun enjoying their time together.

  “The man is mad. I’ve ordered him arrested,” Louis said wearily, kissing her and then sitting down on the bed, “but now it seems he’s disappeared—the police can’t find him.” He fell back against the cushions, staring at the ceiling. “Why do these things always seem to happen just before a trip?”

  A few days later, Athénaïs’s husband was finally apprehended. “In a whorehouse in Paris,” Clorine reported with disgust. “So now he’s locked up in Fort l’Évêque—”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “—but not for long. There’s nothing they can charge him with.”

  “But he attacked her.”

  “She’s his wife.” Clorine shrugged. “That’s not a crime.”

  “It will be good for the Marquise to get away to Chambord,” Petite said, going through a basket of herbal remedies, selecting the ones she might need. “What’s this?” she asked, picking out a scrap of linen tucked away in the bottom. She unfolded it—it held a shriveled worm. She sniffed it: it was dry, without odor.

  “Zut! That’s a bit of Marie-Anne’s cord. I’ve been wondering where it went.”

  Petite wrinkled up her nose.

  “You know, during her birthing at Vincennes, when she was cut free of you—Monsieur Blucher said to give it to you. He said it would protect you from the Devil.”

  Petite folded it back up and slipped it into the pocket under her skirts. She’d had a frightening dream the night before: a dream of the Devil lurking. She could use protection.

  THE CHTEAU AT Chambord was a hateful thing. Everyone was lost in it, everyone cross. The central staircase twisted upon itself; the person coming down eluded the person going up. The rooms, suites, windows and passageways were all alike. Were it not for hints of the sun, one might not know where one was at all. The seventy-seven different stairways did not help.

  Petite was assigned one of the square apartments. Her brother, mother (recently widowed), nursemaid and children—Tito and Marie-Anne—were on the floor above. Athénaïs was in the round tower apartment beside her. It was possible to go from a round apartment into a square one, as Athénaïs discovered, popping through a small door into Petite’s suite.

  “This place makes me dizzy,” she said, casting herself into a chair. She had disguised her bruises under thick white face paint, but nothing could hide the tic in her cheek.

  “I got lost finding my children,” Petite said with a smile. But then she regretted her words. Athénaïs’s crackbrained husband had been banished to his château in the south, and had taken their children with him—a boy and a girl—telling them that their mother was dead. “You need rest,” Petite told her sympathetically.

  “What I need is some brandy,” Athénaïs said.

  PETITE SAW TITO and Marie-Anne each morning and hunted with Louis every afternoon. She tried to persuade Athénaïs to join their excursions, but her friend declined; she needed to conserve her strength, she said, for the evening levee. Every night the courtiers gathered in the King’s apartment to play cards, billiards or lansquenet, feast and watch a performance by the Comédie before proceeding to the ballroom. It was a vigorous life, dedicated to pleasure, culture and perhaps too much wine.

  “I’m concerned about Athénaïs,” Petite confided to Louis after intimacy one late afternoon.

  Louis sat up. “Oh?”

  “She’s still not well.” Athénaïs’s nerval tic was, if anything, even more pronounced.

  “It’s no wonder. She stays up all night,” Louis said with his usual tone of disapproval. He was often critical of Athénaïs—complaining that she didn’t sit a horse properly, that her wit was biting and sometimes cruel.

  “Perhaps if she went riding with us,” Petite suggested. “It would be good for her to get out.” Riding daily had greatly improved her own strength and spirit. That afternoon they had ridden through the meadows where Petite and “her poacher” had first met.

  “She detests the natural world,” Louis said.

  Petite smiled. So true. “But if you insisted?”

  “That wouldn’t make a difference,” Louis said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He was lean and muscular, but even so the deep feather mattress was something of a struggle to climb out of. He stood looking out the window at the wooded hills beyond. “Louise—” he began reflectively, but stopped.

  Petite pulled the covering sheet up over herself. “Yes?”

  He let out his breath. “Madame la Marquise can’t go riding,” he said, turning to face her.

  Petite held his gaze.

  “She’s…delicate: she’s carrying a child.” He sat back down beside her on the bed.

  Petite frowned, taking in this unexpected revelation. That would explain why Athénaïs was ill so much of the time, of late—but why hadn’t she said anything to Petite about it? “I gather her husband is not the father,” she said slowly. Thus the secrecy.

  “No, he’s not,” Louis said wearily. “Legally he is, of course,” he continued, after a
pause, “but no, the Marquis de Montespan is not the father, not in the sense that you mean. But according to the law,” he went on with emphasis, “the Marquis de Montespan can do whatever he wants with that child.”

  That child.

  The windows had been opened; it was a sunny autumn day. Birds were chirping in the vines. Petite had the sense that her life was tilting, yet again; that nothing would ever be the same, that the birds would sing, but that she would hear them differently. “So who, then, is the father?”

  Louis turned to face her. Petite saw the answer in his eyes.

  “I love you,” he said, reaching for her.

  Petite brushed his hand away.

  “You said you’d understand.”

  As if it were a contract she had broken. This Petite could not abide. Angry tears burst from her. Why did it have to be Athénaïs? She could list a thousand answers, each of them wounding. Athénaïs was beautiful, witty, of the highest nobility. She was like a fiery hunter, Petite a hardworking cart pony.

  “Do you love her?” Petite demanded.

  “I wouldn’t call it that,” he said, almost with derision. Abruptly he got up and pulled on his breeches.

  “Then forsake her.”

  “No—I won’t. I can’t. And in any case,” he said, turning to face her, “it wouldn’t be right. I didn’t want this to happen, but now that it has, I will not abandon her.” He pulled on his doublet, his faced flushed in anger. “You need to know that, and decide accordingly,” he said coldly, and left.

  Petite sat watching the fire as it turned to embers. She felt numb—dazed. What were her choices, in fact? She reached for the rosary Louis had given her to replace the one she had lost. The tiny perfect diamonds were of little comfort.

  “Mademoiselle?” Clorine peeked in.

  “Yes, dress me now.” She could hear Athénaïs in her room, hear the hard click-click of her heels on the bare parquet.