Mistress of the Sun (38 page)

She glanced inside. Diablo was standing facing her, his small, sharp ears upright. She dried her cheeks with the edge of her skirt and slowly—cautiously—stepped in.

Diablo threw up his head.

She stood against the wall.
I know you, yet I know you not.
There was beauty in his wildness—in his resistance. She closed her eyes, thinking about her talk with Abbé Patin the day before—her confession.
Had
that spell been broken?

She heard a soft, throaty nicker and opened her eyes. Diablo took a step toward her. She closed her eyes again quickly, not daring to look at him, sensing his approach, his hooves rustling the straw bedding. She felt his warmth, felt him smelling her arm, her hair, her shoulder. Felt his whiskers tickling her cheek. Weeping, she sniffed.

He startled, yet hovered.

Petite slowly reached through her skirts to a crust of bread roll. She held it out, palm up, waiting. Knowing he would come.

P
ETITE SAT UP
, roused from a troubled sleep. A dream lingered: of the royal carriage drawn by eight black horses caparisoned in black velvet and matching plumes. Of knights, varlets, henchmen in hoods, water-men and pages accompanying a long line of black-draped coaches, everyone in mourning. Of strangely silent herds of horses, kennels of dogs, carts loaded with cages of monkeys, parrots and other exotic pets following at the rear. Of peasants following, scooping up the rich leavings. And, at the very end, Diablo, a solitary white figure in a black landscape.

Where was she?

Paris
, she remembered…but not in her little house facing the Palais Royale gardens. No, she was in the Tuileries now, in a new suite of elegant rooms—rooms side by side with Athénaïs’s chambers.

What year was it? What season? February, 1671, the twenty-seventh year of the King’s reign. Soon it would be Ash Wednesday, soon Lent.

That morning she had tended Diablo, who was kept isolated in a courtyard behind the royal stables near rue Saint-Honoré: a cruel captivity. She’d tried, yet again, to back him—but he would not have it.

In the afternoon Louis had come to her, and, still warm from her embrace, he’d gone to Athénaïs. He’d hinted, in jest of course—
of course
—that it would be more efficient to have them both together in one bed. “We wouldn’t fit,” Petite had joked—for Athénaïs had acquired girth—but his offhand remark distressed her.

It was not yet midnight, to judge by the fire still burning in the grate. She felt weighted down with fatigue. Her nights were often sleepless, and what sleep she did get was disturbed by frightening dreams—of a serpent with a woman’s face, her hair swept up in points, of a lean, muscular man in a loincloth, his eyes burning coals.

Her days were clouded with troubling thoughts as well, with fears and suspicions. She’d been losing things: an ivory fan, a lace mantilla. The disappearance of her father’s rosary still grieved her. She suspected Athénaïs now, in all ways: was she taking Petite’s belongings? Worse, was she practicing witchcraft—
on her?

Petite pulled a fur wrap over her shoulders. It had been a dismal winter, haunted by Henriette’s sudden death. An autopsy had proved that Henriette did not die of poisoning, but even so,
people suspected otherwise, whispering of dark magic. There had been no festivals, no médianoche, no balls…until now, with the madness of carnival upon them. Soon there would be the annual Mardi Gras masquerade ball.

Petite went to the window and opened the shutters. The night was cloudless, the moon full and bright. Her rooms faced the Rabbit Warren, the public gardens reaching to the city wall. Along the banks of the Seine she could see a carriage light moving down Le Cours, but otherwise nothing, no sign of life, just the vague outline of the fountain and the rows of elm, cypress and mulberry trees. Beyond the wall were the wooded hills, open country.

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.

A
THÉNAÏS’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.

L
ATE 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.

I
T 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.

P
ETITE
’
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.

“T
HANK
G
OD
,
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.”

P
ETITE 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.”