Mistress of the Sun (2 page)

“Leave the horse be,” Laurent answered wearily. The stallion was a handsome creature, but his condition was pitiable. His wife would have a thing to say, that was for sure. “You will just unsettle him.”

Petite sat back down beside her father and bit into a bread roll, swinging her feet. “Was that gentler a Moor?”

“I believe so,” Laurent said as they approached Reugny. The spire of the little church could be seen over the treetops. He wondered if there would be news. The sun was at salute level—about five of the clock—and the mail rider from Tours might have arrived. Last he had heard, Bordeaux, to the south, was in revolt
against the Court, and the King’s forces had the city under siege. If Bordeaux proved victorious, anything could happen. The King might have to retreat behind the walls of Paris and abandon the countryside to the warring princes. What was left to fight over? France was like a shattered vase. The only thing people shared was poverty. Peasants were lucky to get fifteen sous for a day’s labor, the price of a basket of eggs.

How was it possible to go on living with such discord? Laurent felt for the copper coin sewn into the lining of his jerkin, the one engraved with the image of Henry the Great. That good king’s death had unleashed a century of mayhem. Every night Laurent prayed that their young and most Christian King would put an end to the eternal bloodshed. The King was God’s representative; that was ordained. Surely he would triumph.

“I was going to the land of the Moors,” Petite said, interrupting Laurent’s thoughts.

“Oh?” he replied absently, pulling the wagon into a vacant lot across from the village green. Something was going on: a crowd had gathered to one side of the hanging tree. A great laugh went up and then a hiss. A cockfight, perhaps?

“This morning.”

“You were going to the land of the Moors
this
morning?”

“To be beheaded,” Petite said. “Like Saint Teresa in the book. But that Moor was a gentler, and he didn’t have a sword. Or an ax.”

“Saint Teresa’s book?” Laurent asked, confused. Over time he had acquired a small library—some texts on husbandry and history, but largely religious and philosophical tracts. Among them was Saint Teresa’s account of her life, a slim leather-bound volume. How did his daughter know of it? “Did Monsieur Péniceau read it to you?” His son’s tutor had once been a Court scribe; he could read and write passably, but theology was certainly not his province.

“I’ve been reading it myself, but I’m only to page sixteen.”

Laurent turned to stare at her. “You can
read?
”

“Some words are hard.”

“Who taught you?” His daughter was precocious—that he well knew—but his son Jean, two years older, had yet to even learn his letters.

“I learned myself,” Petite said, standing and surveying the green. “Someone’s in the stocks.”

“Stay with the wagon,” Laurent instructed, making a mental note to inquire into this matter later. “I have to pick up some supplies at the apothecary.”

“Will Diablo be all right?” Petite asked, looking back at the White.

“He cannot go anywhere.” The rope was holding. “Do not let anyone near him.”

Laurent had walked only a few paces when he heard “Papa!”

A strapping lad ran across the crowded square, an angle rod in one hand and a bait bag in the other.

“Jean,” Petite called out to her brother.

“They’ve got Agathe Balin in the stocks,” the boy told his father breathlessly. He turned and pointed at the crowd.

“Why?” Petite asked.

“No mind,” Laurent said with a warning tone.

“For
fornicating,
Papa. With Monsieur Bosse, everyone’s saying. Go look, Papa. She’s covered in spit.” Jean’s freckled cheeks were flushed.

“Monsieur Bosse—Charlotte’s father?” Petite asked.

Laurent glared down at his son. “You are supposed to be at your lessons.”

Jean threw his sack and rod into the back of the wagon. “Where’d this horse come from?” He circled around to have a look. The horse snorted, white-eyed. “Is it wild?”

“Stay back, son,” Laurent warned.

“Mother!” the boy cursed, jumping to avoid a smartly aimed kick. “That’s one mean beast.”

“He’s mine,” Petite said. “I prayed for him.”

“Little one, he is not a horse for a girl,” Laurent said, heading for the apothecary.

“What does ‘fornicating’ mean?” Petite asked, making room for her big brother beside her on the cart’s bench.

“W
HAT GOOD IS A HORSE
you can’t ride or work?” Madame Françoise de la Vallière demanded, her hands bloody from killing
a rabbit for Lord’s Day dinner. She cut off the head and snapped the legs to remove the feet. She was a pretty woman with round cheeks and a dimpled chin. Deep frown lines separated her thin plucked brows.

“I have yet to meet a stallion I cannot ride,” Laurent said with false optimism. He had needed the help of the ploughman and three field hands just to get the beast into the barn—with pitchforks
and
the whalebone whip.

“He tried to kick me,” Jean said.

“No news yet out of Bordeaux.” Laurent let his running hound in by the back door. The dog hurried to her pups in the basket by the fire.

“They’ve got Mademoiselle Balin in stocks in town,” Jean said.

Blanche, the pock-scarred kitchen maid, turned her one good eye to stare. “
Agathe
Balin?”

Françoise raised her brows. “You don’t say.”

“For fornicating with Monsieur Bosse, everyone’s saying.”

“A married man.” Françoise cut through the rabbit’s groin. “That girl has had the Devil in her from the day she was born.” She took out the waste tube and cut off the tail, then pulled the skin down over the body in one easy go.

“Everyone spat on her, and a dog was licking her face,” Jean said as he emptied two eels out of his sack into a copper basin. “You should have heard her scream when I tickled her feet.”

“Good catch,” Françoise noted, gesturing to Blanche to take the eels outside to clean.

“And
you
should have been praying for the salvation of her soul, son, not tormenting the girl,” Laurent said with a sigh.

“Everyone was doing it,” Jean said, following the maid out the back door.

“He’s just a lad, Laurent,” Françoise said, cutting the rabbit’s stomach lining and removing the innards.

“He was supposed to be studying.”

“And
she
was supposed to be at her needlework.” Françoise glanced over at Petite, who was stroking the hound by the fire. “She runs off, and the two of you come back with a horse. What kind of discipline is that?”

“A true White is rare,” Laurent said. The stallion even had blue eyes, something he’d heard of but never seen. “A noble breed,” he added, thinking of the ancient inscription etched over the bedroom mantel:
Ad principem ut ad ignem amor indissolubilis.
For the King, love like an altar fire, eternal. These were the first words he saw on waking, the last words he saw before falling asleep. It had been his family’s motto for generations. His father’s great-great-great-grandfather had ridden beside Jeanne d’Arc. The King could count on a Vallière in troubled times, but Françoise was not a Vallière. She was a Provost, a family that tended to profit in troubled times. She would never understand the value of a horse such as this: a true Blanchard, a beautiful cheval blanc, the mount of kings. Not everything could be measured and weighed, not everything had a price.

“And he has conformation,” Petite said, nuzzling one of the pups.

“He has
good
conformation,” Laurent corrected. His old cavalry mount Hongre could hardly manage a trot anymore. He fancied himself on the White.

“Father’s going to breed him.”

“It’s not seemly to discuss such things with a girl,” Françoise told Laurent under her breath. “As it is, she spends too much time with the horses. It’s time she started acting like a lady.” She plunged her knife into the breast of the rabbit, splitting it in two with one stroke.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, at the third cock’s crow, Petite moved quietly out the back door, a dry crust of bread in her hand. It had rained in the night. The moon was still visible, illuminating the outbuildings, the misty kitchen gardens and the great trees beyond—a silent world of half-light. The cock crowed again, answered by a chirping starling. Petite put on her wooden sabots and picked her way across the puddled poultry yard.

She pried open the barn door, taking care to lift it as best she could so that the rusty hinge wouldn’t squeak. She didn’t want to wake the ploughman asleep in the loft. Three swallows swooped by her. She stood in the dark, inhaling the warm scent of the horses, feeling their alert presence. Old Hongre nickered softly. The ploughman stirred, then returned to snoring.

Dim light shone through the window at the far side of the barn.
A moment passed before Petite could make out the shapes of the horses and the two milk cows. On the wall above the harnesses was a silver-birch switch that kept demons from riding the horses at night.

The White’s head appeared in the corner stall and then disappeared. Petite groped her way along the feed bins and woodpile to where Diablo stood facing her, a ghostly apparition. “Ho, boy,” she whispered. He tossed his head. Handsome he surely was, the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen.
Behold, thou art fair,
she thought, recalling a line from the Song of Solomon. She longed to comb his matted mane, wash and oil his long white tail so snarled with burrs. The scabs on his haunches would clear with care, if only he would let her near him.

“Beloved,” she murmured, the word dangerous and thrilling.

The horse pinned back his ears.

She tucked the crust under her armpit to give it her scent, then held it out on her palm, both offering and bribe. He turned his back to her, tail swishing.

Petite popped a bit of the crust into her mouth and crunched it noisily, watching with satisfaction as Diablo’s right ear swiveled back. Patience is the companion of wisdom, her father had often told her, quoting Saint Augustine. She held out her hand yet again.

The horse twirled and lunged, teeth bared.

T
HE FALL WAS STORMY
that year. On wet days, if she had to be indoors, Petite preferred dusting the books in her father’s small study, and she liked best to do it while her brother Jean was at his lessons in the sitting room. That way, she could listen as she worked, learning Latin and even a little history. On this particular rainy November morning a fire was crackling in the hearth, and Monsieur Péniceau was reading aloud from
Consolation of Philosophy,
a translation of
Consolatio Philosophiae
by Boethius.

“‘Happy is that death which does not thrust itself upon men in their pleasant years,’” the tutor recited, his voice high and strangled.

Through the open door Petite could see Jean resting his head on the table, one cheek on the back of his hands, his eyes closed. With his turned-up nose, dimpled chin and dark curls, he looked like a cherub, the very image of their pretty mother.

Petite opened the window shutters to let in light and pulled up a step stool so that she could scan the spines of the books nearest the window. One appeared to be a book of Latin verses on hunting. Another—
Histoire naturelle des quadrupèdes
—was a pigskin text with a gilt-stamped spine. As far as she could tell, the books on this shelf were the more practical texts: on animal husbandry, herbs and trees.

She took down the dog-eared text of medical recipes her father consulted when tending the ill and impoverished. Petite knew this book well, for she often went with him on his rounds. The day before, they’d been to see a woman and three children who lived in a cave in the rock escarpment. The youngest had cut his leg setting a trap, and Petite’s father had bandaged it with clean linen. At the head of the boy’s bed of dried leaves was a cross made from twigs. The woman had bowed low before her father as they left, pressing his hand to her forehead as if seeking benediction.

The book, so often used, wasn’t dusty, but Petite wiped the cover with her rag anyway and slid it back into place.

“‘While I was pondering thus in silence,’” the tutor whined on, “‘there appeared standing beside me an old woman, whose face was full of majesty, and whose eyes shone with wisdom.’”

Petite took out the next book and held it to the light, examining it for grime. It was bigger than the others, but it had no spine—the sheets of thin, yellowed paper were attached at the
back with twine. The title,
The Horseman
, was crudely stamped onto a pasteboard cover. The contents were printed, not written, making the words easier for her to make out.

Carefully, Petite turned the brittle pages: “The Horse-Breeder,” “Horse-Ryder,” “Horse-Runner,” “Horse-Ambler,” “Horse-Keeper.” Many afternoons, in the quiet hour after the midday meal, she had gone to the barn where, with fistfuls of grain or a stolen lump of sugar, she had tried to woo the stallion. She had used caressing words, offered him loaves of horse bread she’d baked herself, and even so he threatened her. She prayed for him every night before going to bed, imploring the saints.

Why are my prayers unanswered?
she thought as she thumbed through the pages: “How to Correct the Evil Motions,” “Corrections against Restiveness,” “Of the Witch and the Nightmare.” Her breath quickened as she read “Of the Bone Magic.”

Petite glanced through the door at her brother and his tutor. Jean was clearly asleep now, his mouth agape. “‘Away with you, Sirens,’” the tutor read on, “‘seductive unto destruction.’” Petite opened the book to the section on bone magic, its use and composition.
Beware
, she read.

She heard the entry door shut, and then voices: it was her father, returning from town. She slipped the book back onto the shelf and went to the study door. Monsieur Péniceau stopped reading and Jean sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“Wonderful news,” Petite’s father said as he entered the room. His long hair was dripping wet from the rain. “The King has won a victory over Bordeaux.”

“Bravo!” the tutor exclaimed shrilly.

“Bravo,” Jean said, standing. “Has the rain let up? Can I go fishing?”

“Not so soon, son. There is a great deal to be done. The Court will be stopping at Amboise on its way back to Paris.”

“The King is coming to
Amboise?
” Petite asked, stepping into the room.

“Aye, little one. The King and the Queen Mother. I’m to put on a royal welcome. Your mother will have to come with me to help serve the Queen Mother, and—” He turned to Petite’s brother. “You will come as well, Jean. It will be a good opportunity for you to make yourself known to members of the Court, possibly even the King and his brother, who are close to you in age.”

“Not me?” Petite asked, crestfallen.

“Y
OU’RE TOO YOUNG
to go, Louise, and that’s all there is to it,” Françoise said, rummaging through her trunk.

“But I’m six now,” Petite argued.

“It will annoy the members of the Court to have children about. Blanche will look after you here.”

“Jean is going, and he’s only eight.”

“Eight is mature, young lady, and six is not. In any case, it’s different for a boy.” Françoise shook out her mauve velvet skirt.
“I’ll have to wear my yellow silk,” she said sadly, more to herself than to her daughter. “Why aren’t you at your needlework?” she asked.

“The rain has stopped,” Petite said. “May I go help Father with the horses?”

“Go, go,” Françoise said impatiently, opening her strongbox of jewels. “Mon Dieu!” she gasped.

L
AURENT DE LA
V
ALLIÈRE
was in the barn checking on his old cavalry mount when his daughter appeared and tugged at his sleeve.

“Mother said to tell you that her pearls are missing.”

Laurent sighed. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said, picking up Hongre’s front right hoof.

“I hope you’re not going to ride the Hungarian to Amboise, Papa,” Jean said from his perch on a stall rail. “He’s old and has a flat face. Everyone would laugh.”

“Hongre is a noble horse, son. He has served me well—but no, I would rather not take him to Amboise.” Laurent set down the horse’s hoof and stroked his shoulder. “He is getting too old for long rides.”

A horse snorted and they all turned.

“Why don’t you ride Diablo?” Petite asked.

“If I could tame him.” Despite his best efforts, Laurent had not been able to get near the White.

Petite went down to the corner stall with a fistful of grain.

“Stay back from that horse,” Laurent warned. “Go collect the eggs.”

Petite tossed a fistful of grain into the stall and dashed out the barn door.

“And you,” Laurent said, addressing his son, “clean up Hongre for tomorrow. I’m going to have to take him to Amboise.”

“Why can’t the ploughman do that?” Jean complained, jumping down and brushing the dust from his breeches. “Look at all the muck he’s let heap up in the White’s stall.”

“Son.” Laurent felt for his beads. “He’s fixing a wheel on the cart.” The corner stall
was
knee-deep in leavings. The barn, usually so tidy, reeked.

What
is
to be done with that horse?
Laurent thought, heading back across the barnyard to the manor. From the day the creature arrived, there had been trouble. A pig died of the measles. One of the cart horses got mange, and the lumpy eruptions on her back oozed fluid, making her impossible to harness. Laurent himself had wounded his leg on the plough blade. The cut had healed, thank goodness, but only after he had appealed to Saint George and treated the plough blade with a nostrum, purchased at a stall in the Reugny market, made from moss off the head of an unburied male corpse. The ploughman, whose bones knew these things, was convinced that the White had let in evil spirits. His matted mane, twisted into witch locks, was evidence aplenty. Laurent had given Curé Barouche ten sous to disenchant the horse as well as the barn, but even that had done no good.

Diablo,
indeed.
A devil of a beast,
he thought, pausing at the back door and recalling, with a sinking heart, the matter of his wife’s pearls.

Françoise was in the kitchen, lifting green codling apples out of a pot of boiling water. “I am sorry about your pearls,” Laurent said, placing his hat on a peg and taking off his greatcoat.

“It’s the scullery girl’s doing,” she said, plunging an apple into a wooden bucket of water from the well. “She’s got sticky fingers, that one.”

“It wasn’t the girl, Françoise,” Laurent said, stepping out of his work boots. “I took them.”

His wife twirled to face him, an apple in one hand and a knife in the other.

Laurent dipped his head apologetically. “I pawned them,” he confessed.

“You pawned
my
pearls—the pearls I inherited from my grandmother?”

“I promise I will get the necklace back.”

“You had no right,” Françoise said, tears threatening.

“Calm down,” he whispered, nodding toward the pantry, where Blanche and the scullery girl were working. “Someone needed the money.”

“
We
need the money, Laurent.”

“I am sorry—” Laurent’s apology was interrupted by a banging on the kitchen door.

“Why must the ploughman always pound like that?”

“I’ll get it, Françoise.”

“Master, it’s that White,” the ploughman said, his breath misting in the cold fall air. “He’s kicked out two of the stall boards.”

“Is he contained?”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ll be right there.”

“That horse has to go, Laurent,” Françoise said as her husband closed the door against the chill. “Sell him at the market.”

“Getting the horse there is the problem,” Laurent said, reaching for his coat.

“Then it’s time to consider the obvious.” Françoise deftly peeled an apple, its skin hanging down in one long curl. “I don’t know why you object to feeding horseflesh to the help. It’s good nourishment, and—”

“I will not do so, and that is the end of it.”

Petite appeared at the door with a basket of eggs. “Are you talking about Hongre?”

“You are not to interrupt your elders, Mademoiselle,” Françoise said, dividing the apple in half and cutting out the core. “And no, we’re not talking about Hongre—although you should get rid of him as well while you’re at it, Laurent. That old horse does nothing but eat.”

“Not just yet, Françoise,” Laurent said with a sigh.

“You were talking about Diablo.” Petite set the egg basket down roughly.

“Careful, now.” Françoise frowned to see two eggs cracked.

“Little one, your mother is right. She is only being practical.”

“But not Diablo, Father!”

Laurent pulled his hat down over his ears. “We leave for Amboise tomorrow. When I return, it will have to be done.”

C
AW
!
A
CARRION CROW
called out in warning.

Petite, bundled in homespun wool, looked up. Three blue-black crows perched on the branches of an elm below a mass of stick-and-mud nests.

Caw! Caw!

Petite turned to watch as her father checked the harness of the four-wheeled open carriage. “When will you be back?” she asked, reaching to stroke the neck of her father’s old horse. Hongre was sleeping in the bright morning sun, his reins looped through the spokes of a wheel. The covered donkey cart was ready to go, loaded with trunks and bedding.

“That depends.” Laurent pulled the leather strap two holes tighter and tugged on it to make sure it was secure.

Petite looked into her father’s pale eyes. “I don’t want you to kill Diablo, Father.”

“A horse must be of use.”

“He can be tamed. I’ve been praying for him.”

“He is dangerous. I do not want you fooling with him—understand? I forbid it.” He bent down. “You are
not
to go near him. Now, get back inside. You’ll catch your death out here.”

Petite ran to the manor steps and crouched there, hugging her knees. The cobbles of the courtyard were strewn with bright autumn leaves. Through the bare tree branches, she could glimpse the river, edged with moss and ferns.

The big front door opened, letting out a waft of warm vanillascented air. “
There
you are,” Françoise said with a scolding tone. She was wearing whalebone hip-hoops under her cloak and gown, so she had to turn sideways to get through the door. The tutor was behind her, followed by Jean, uncomfortably done up in his church clothes, a worn yellow velvet doublet and knee breeches that were somewhat too small for him now.

“I’m not cold, Mother,” Petite said, her teeth chattering. She scooted over, to make room for them to pass.

“Jean, come here,” Laurent called out, placing the whip in its socket.

Jean pushed past, and the tutor helped Françoise down the steps, her boned skirts lifting and settling with each step. She turned at the bottom.

“You be good, Louise,” she said, pointing her spotted rabbit muff at her daughter. “No mischief. No climbing trees. No horsing around.”

Caw! Caw!
The carrion crows took flight.