Gates of Gold

An Unexpected Reward

Cécile calls out into the trees, her voice swallowed by a forest of cedar, pine, and scrub oak. The ferns and moss underfoot muffle every footstep. A swallow darts overhead and vanishes into the meadow beyond the shadows. Bonjour, she calls, then again, asking where the voice is. A faint moan answers her from somewhere below.

Cécile leads the horse as she follows the sound through a tangled slope of roots and fallen logs. It leads down to the base of a muddy ravine. There, sprawled beside a log, lies a stout woman with white hair and a pockmarked face twisted in pain. Her plumed hat has been knocked into the mud beside her. Her rumpled lavender riding skirts and velvet jacket mark her as part of the king’s hunting party. The fabric at her left shoulder has torn where the joint juts out at an unnatural angle. It is a dislocation, one Cécile recognizes on sight from tending animals. When the woman’s eyes flutter open, they are startlingly blue. Tears slip from beneath her lashes before she squeezes them shut again.

Cécile wishes she had a man’s strength to lift the woman onto her horse. Instead she can only listen for hoofbeats and hope a search party is already combing the woods. Nothing answers but a nightingale’s distant song. She promises the woman, whom she addresses simply as Madame, that she cannot mend the shoulder herself. But Papa helps many people, and he will know what to do. She spots the woman’s horse grazing nearby but resists the urge to ride him home. She knows a peasant caught on a royal horse risks a flogging or worse. She ties him to a tree instead, promises to return quickly, and races on foot back to her family’s thatched hut.

She bursts through the door to find Papa hunched over an anatomy book. He arranges small animal bones across their eating board as he studies their shapes. A cough forces him to hunch further forward between words. In a rush, Cécile tells him about the injured noblewoman in the ravine. He agrees at once, but pauses first at the washbasin to scrub his hands. Impatient, Cécile blurts that the woman does not care what he looks like. But he only reminds her, gently, that clean hands matter more to the woman’s health than how quickly they arrive. Then he gathers his leather case of instruments and hobbles after her into the forest.

At the ravine, Papa kneels beside the woman and gently runs his hands over her shoulder, arm, and neck. He murmurs reassurance in his halting way. He tells her the fix will hurt for only a moment before she feels much better. Cécile kneels at the woman’s head and presses both hands down on her shoulders to hold her still. Papa grips the elbow. The woman’s teeth chatter, and sweat beads on her forehead as she cries out something in French, a plea to God. But the joint slips back into its socket with a soft pop, and her breathing steadies almost at once. She calls it a miracle. Papa tells her the soreness will fade faster with ice, which he understands can be had even in summer at Versailles. Cécile can hardly breathe, imagining the reward that might follow. It could be a purse heavy enough to buy fabric for a new skirt or food for a season. It could even mean a pair of leather shoes to spare Papa’s feet from his worn wooden clogs.

After the woman sits up and catches her breath, Cécile learns that the horse had been spooked by nothing more than a rabbit. The woman scolds the animal fondly while Papa helps her rise, then thanks Cécile, too. The woman introduces herself. She says she is neither the dead queen nor the king’s secret wife, Madame de Maintenon, whose existence is hardly a secret to anyone. She is Elisabeth Charlotte of Germany, the Duchesse d’Orléans, sister-in-law to the Sun King, known to nearly everyone simply as Madame. She remarks, studying Papa with real interest, that his steady, courageous hands are the very opposite of what she feared. She had expected far less when she saw a peasant coming to help.

Madame asks what reward might repay their kindness. Papa hesitates, glancing away in thought. Then he quietly asks for something far greater than coins: a position at court that would spare his daughter a peasant’s future. It is the kind of future that leaves girls her age bound for a convent or married off. They rarely have any say in the matter. Madame studies Cécile and asks whether she can read and whether she is truly so good with animals. Papa nods and says Cécile is good with animals.

Satisfied, Madame agrees at once. She explains that she needs a new servant to look after her six small dogs. Her last girl married and moved to Paris. Before riding off, she lets Papa help her onto a nearby log and up into the saddle. She settles herself sidesaddle with a groan. Cécile feels dizzy at the news, almost unable to believe it. The thought of leaving Papa alone frightens her, especially with his cough worsening by the week. But she knows a girl her age has no say in her own future, so she only murmurs her thanks.