Free Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland

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 The gold Turkey rug had been replaced by one of knotted wool.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.
    P ETITE 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,