Minette by Melanie Clegg

Author:Melanie Clegg
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Europe, Children's eBooks, Biographical, Children's Books, Historical Fiction, Genre Fiction, Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Madame Guillotine
Published: 2013-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Colombes, December 1659

I pull on my heavy red wool cloak and sturdiest boots and go for a walk in the deserted gardens that stretch behind our château at Colombes. I see Mam watching me from her closet window and wave gaily up at her, regretfully abandoning my original mischievous instinct to quickly fashion a snowball and hurl it at the glass she is standing behind. Mam smiles faintly as if she guesses my fell intent, lifts her hand for a second then turns away, presumably to return to her fireside and the fluttering ministrations of her ladies.

Poor Mam, she’s still feeling the chill as sharply as ever and on most days doesn’t even get out of bed but instead spends her time propped up against a mountain of pillows, taking her meals on a tray and dozing beneath soft duck feather filled silk and velvet coverlets as her ladies in waiting take turns to read to her. She tries to persuade me to live as she does, arguing that I am so delicate that such weather cannot possibly be healthy for me, but I am having none of it. What girl of fifteen could possibly prefer to spend her days in bed when there is a landscape covered in a blanket of soft, untouched snow waiting for her outdoors?

It’s a splendid day, frosty, sharp and bright. The snow stopped a few hours earlier and the air is heavy and still with only the distant cooing of the doves rustling in their cote to break the silence. I plunge my feet into the soft snow and smile to myself, enjoying the crisp slap of the cold against my cheeks and the way my very breath seems to be snatched away from me by the chill wind.

I’ve been trapped inside with just my embroidery, virginals and books for company for most of the afternoon and the sun is now starting to descend to the horizon, hanging low in the winter sky so that I have to shield my eyes with my gloved hands as I walk towards it. It’ll be dusk soon, wrapping Colombes in an soft silence punctuated only by the shrill cries of foxes in the garden and the eerie shrieks of owls hunting for prey in the trees around the edge of the lawn.

I pause beside a statue of Flora, her pretty garlands of flowers incongruous beneath their thick layer of frost and snow. I gaze up into her pale, smooth face and gently reach up to touch one of her cold hands. I remember the court ballet in the summer where I danced as Flora and Marie and Louis scandalised the court by kissing on stage. That seems like a lifetime away now. Louis is still in the south of France and has begrudgingly thrown himself into his betrothal with The Big Nosed Infanta while Marie is far away from court, trapped in a castle in the provinces.

I’m so caught up in my thoughts of how things

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