Free Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland Page A

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.”
    T HE 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.