# Chapter 31: The Drowning, the Ghost, and the Confession
Hello everyone, it’s me again! How are you all doing? I hope you’re cozy, curious, and ready for another deeply emotional journey. Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 31 of "Mistress Of The Sun free digital audiobook." This chapter is a haunting one—part family reckoning, part ghost story, part confession—and it cuts straight to the heart of Petite’s impossible position.
We begin inside a moving coach, where the air is thick with unsaid things. Petite is traveling with her mother, Françoise, her brother, Jean, and her little daughter, Marie-Anne. Petite is considering retreat—perhaps even living at her new duchy, Vaujours. But Jean refuses to let her romanticize escape. Even if she had reason to leave Louis, he says, she could not. The King would never allow it. Jean would not allow it. And if she tried, she would have to leave her children behind.
Petite insists she would take them with her. Jean counters with brutal practicality: they are not simply her children. They belong to Louis. They belong to France. To take them would estrange them from their father the King, ruin their futures, and break their lives. Even a peasant woman has no true right to her children under the law, and the King’s law is even stronger. Petite is discouraged because she knows he is right. Her daughter and son carry royal blood. They are not hers alone.
Jean reminds her that he has an interest in this too. Petite fires back that their mother has a pension and Jean has Gabrielle. Jean replies that he now has a duchy. The truth is, Petite is seriously considering living there. It is one of the reasons for this trip. She wants to see the château, the estate, and imagine what life might be like away from Court.
Françoise tries to soften the argument, moving Marie-Anne between them. The child moans in her sleep but settles again. Petite thanks her mother, then tries to explain the rupture between her and the King—but words fail her. How do you describe such a break? Jean asks if another woman is involved. He says he hopes not, because if that were true, there would be no marriage left standing. Petite wants to mention Jean’s own marriage but holds her tongue. Instead, she says it plainly: the Marquise de Montespan is with child by the King.
Even Jean is shocked. Françoise asks if Montespan is not married. Petite nods. Jean mutters that she is married to a madman. The implications are overwhelming. If Athénaïs’s husband found out, if the public knew, the scandal would be catastrophic. Marie-Anne wakes and asks if they are there yet. Petite pulls her close, relieved to end the conversation.
They arrive at their old homestead. It is both familiar and strange. The trees have grown, but so have the weeds. Jean says a good tenant will change that. He kisses Petite’s hand and offers an awkward apology. Petite is moved by her brother’s clumsy regret. They walk across the weedy courtyard to the door of their childhood home.
Inside, most of the furnishings have been sold and replaced with lesser pieces—spare, but functional. Françoise cleans out a mouse nest from the old kitchen stove and, once Jean gets a spark going, starts a fire. She sends Jean and Marie-Anne down to the river to catch something for dinner. Jean asks if Marie-Anne wants to catch eels, just like her mother used to do. Petite calls after them to watch her by the water. Marie-Anne swings on her uncle’s arm, laughing.
Petite’s old attic room has been taken over by bats, so she makes a bed for herself and Marie-Anne on a pallet in the sitting room. Late that night, she lies beside her daughter, listening to her gentle breathing, feeling its warmth on her cheek. The night is still, silent except for crickets. She stares into the dark. Her mother has taken the only lantern upstairs, and they have no night candle. She hears something moving. She remembers lying in the dark as a child, listening for the Devil, fearing he was lurking under her bed, waiting to pounce. She thinks of bone magic. She touches the locket she sleeps with—the locket that now holds a bit of Marie-Anne’s birth cord, a strand of Tito’s hair, and Diablo’s mane. Her trinity.
In the morning, Petite slips out the back door into the courtyard. The coach horses watch her with curiosity. She strokes one and turns toward the barn. The door hangs off its hinges. She steps inside. It is dark, the small window boarded over. After a moment, her eyes adjust. The splintered walls of Diablo’s stall have fallen in, and wood crates are stacked over the spot where her father died. The cross is gone. The twitch is gone. She hears creatures scurrying and backs out into the light.
She walks behind the barn. There, where her childhood “convent” once stood, is a pile of stone. It makes her sad. She remembers her childish quest to follow in the footsteps of Saint Teresa—and how far she has strayed. She remembers burying the pin case. Is it still there? She crouches, pushing aside shriveled leaves, searching for a tool. There is only a bent iron nail, but it is long enough. She stabs it into the dirt. It glances off stones. She checks her bearings—the barn wall, the stone outline of her old hovel—moves some fallen rocks, and tries again. She hits tin.
Petite brushes off the case and studies it. At times she wondered if it had all been a dream, but now the memory returns clearly: killing a toad, burying it under an anthill, taking its skeleton to the river at night. She had been only six years old. How did she have the courage? She had been desperate to save Diablo’s life. Now she is desperate again, but this time it is her own life that needs saving. She pries the case open. There are still traces of oil. Bone magic. Slowly, she makes the sign of the cross over it. It is the Devil’s power—but power nonetheless. The power to tame, to make things right.
They leave for Vaujours shortly after. Jean rides alongside the coach with his sword drawn, “for safety.” They are heading into unknown parts. The rocking carriage soon puts Françoise and Marie-Anne to sleep, leaving Petite alone with her thoughts. She obsessively reviews the past—lies, she now knows. What are her choices?
The landscape is flat and barren, still scarred by war. They pass a quarry and the remains of what must once have been a great forest. Men and women in rags work the fields, children in tow. They stop and stare, mouths agape, to see a duchess’s coach go by. They stop at a ramshackle inn to refresh the horses. The driver is not sure which way to go. Petite hands Jean a rolled-up parchment survey. He traces the territory with his finger, amazed.
Sometime later, the coach climbs out of a valley into scrubby terrain. A stone structure looms against the cloudless sky. A shrub rustles as wild creatures scurry away. Marie-Anne says it has towers. A goshawk takes flight. Françoise says it is a castle—a small castle. A very small castle, Petite thinks, and in ruins. Moss covers the remains of a stone staircase. Trees fill a roofless chamber. Vines hang from broken arches.
Françoise remembers now: Vaujours was where the Lady in White lived. Petite recalls the same. The coach jolts to a halt in what was once a courtyard, now overgrown with shrubs. To their right, the tumbledown castle. To their left, a pond. Françoise silently mouths the word “drowned herself.” Petite thinks she hears a woman singing. She asks if her mother heard it. Françoise asks if she means the frogs. But the woman’s voice is a deep, sweet alto, both passionate and plaintive. Where is it coming from? They are so isolated.
Petite says they cannot stay here. Françoise protests that they have come all this way. Jean jumps off his horse, ties the reins, and lets the animal graze. He says the turret is still intact, then relieves himself against the stone wall. Françoise says Petite wants to leave. Jean says they should at least look around.
Jean is showing Petite where an addition could be built when Françoise appears with a posy of flowers. Petite asks where Marie-Anne is. Her mother says the child is asleep in the coach. A wind picks up. Petite feels a prickly uneasiness and says she is going to check. She lifts her skirts and runs back to the courtyard. The coach door is open. The driver is asleep on the roof with his hat over his face. The horses pull at weeds. The coach is empty except for baskets and travel clutter. Where is Marie-Anne? Petite scans the cattails, the shrubby willows, the gently lapping water of the pond. Then she sees something that makes her heart stop: a tiny hand reaching above the surface.
“Jean!” Petite wades into the water, her leather boots leaden, dragging. “O Mary!” She feels a tendril, just a touch, and lunges. She grasps her daughter’s wrist. Marie-Anne is blue. Petite thrashes back to shore with her child in her arms, praying with all her might. Jean takes Marie-Anne, lays her on the stones, and presses his hands into her tiny chest. A fountain of pond water spews from her mouth into his face. “Good girl,” he says, wiping his cheeks. “Keep it coming.” Marie-Anne begins to wail.
Jean lifts her and hands her into Petite’s arms. “You’re safe now, my sweet,” Petite says, pressing the child to her heart. She notices something clutched in Marie-Anne’s hand. She pries it free. Light glints off the pin case. “Mine,” Marie-Anne wails. With a prayer and a curse, Petite heaves the case into the water, rocking her wailing daughter as it floats and then sinks out of sight.
Back in the coach, Françoise asks what Petite thinks. Petite does not know what to think—only that she has the Virgin to thank, and Jean. She closes her eyes, wincing against the memory of her daughter’s hand sticking up out of the water. Françoise says Marie-Anne told her she saw a lady in a white dress, and that was why she woke up—the lady was singing to her. Petite admits she heard the voice too. Françoise concludes it must have been the ghost, just like they say: the ghost of the Lady in White. Petite is unsure. The voice had been angelic. How could that be?
Françoise says there is one thing she knows: she is never going back there. Petite agrees. She feels her mother’s hand on her own. Françoise advises patience. Accept this other interest, she says. That is how to win him back. Really, you have to treat men like babies—even kings.
Back in Paris, the courtiers are pleased to return for the new year and to celebrate the city’s transformation. The new street lights have everyone in raptures: night turned to day. The city is safer now, and with so many workers paving the roads, soon it will be cleaner too. The muddy path along the Seine has been replaced by a tree-lined embankment called Le Cours. It has already become a popular spot for the fashionable world to parade their finery.
Out of the public eye, Louis rents a house for Athénaïs for her confinement, and she disappears from view. Secrecy is crucial. Louis, after all, is their Most Christian King. The day before Easter he confesses, touches for the Evil, and makes the stations of the cross at both Notre-Dame and Hôtel-Dieu—a show of devotion never before seen in a king.
That morning, Petite sits shivering in the cold confessional, praying for guidance, for a sign. In a week, the Court will return to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. In a week, Athénaïs will emerge from childbed and rejoin the Court there—rejoin Louis, and her. Petite hears the priest enter, coughing. His breath through the grille smells of garlic. “Forgive me, Father,” she begins, “for I have sinned.” It has been two years since her last confession. A year and a half ago, she had another child. Dear little Tito. The priest knows, of course. Louis had publicly legitimated their son the month before.
“I have malice in my heart against a woman I once loved as a sister,” Petite says. She pauses, unsure how much she can reveal. “Because now my ‘beloved’ loves her as well.” The priest says, “Ah.” He knows the code. He knows she means the King. But mention of this other woman no doubt takes him by surprise. “My health often prevents me from intimate congress,” Petite goes on, uncomfortable about addressing what comes next.
This chapter leaves us balanced on a knife’s edge. Petite has faced the temptation of old magic, the terror of nearly losing her child, the ghostly echo of the Lady in White, and the cold reality that her rival is about to return. And now she kneels in a confessional, trying to name her sin while her heart is still breaking.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating
As a reader, this chapter hit me in waves. The coach argument is painfully real: Petite is not simply a jealous mistress; she is a mother trapped by royal law and royal blood. Then the visit to the old homestead brings a ghost of childhood, and the pin case resurfaces like a buried sin. I loved how the bone magic thread returned—Petite’s desperation is so strong that she reaches for the Devil’s power even as she makes the sign of the cross over it. The near-drowning at Vaujours is terrifying and beautifully paced; that tiny hand above the water is an image I will not forget. The Lady in White adds a gothic chill, but the real horror is how close Petite comes to losing Marie-Anne. The confessional ending is perfect: intimate, tense, and morally tangled. This is a chapter of motherhood, rivalry, superstition, and survival.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.8 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction
Next chapter, I predict Petite will be forced to confront the return of Athénaïs more directly than ever. The priest may offer penance, but he cannot solve the political and emotional trap Petite is in. Athénaïs will emerge from confinement, perhaps with a newborn and with even more power over Louis. Petite will try her mother’s advice—patience, acceptance, even pretending not to see—but her pride and grief will make it nearly impossible. The sunken pin case may not stay buried in the story’s memory, and the Lady in White’s song may return as an omen. I also suspect Louis will continue his public performance of piety while privately rearranging the lives of the women around him. Petite may be asked to smile, serve, and stay silent, but something in her will begin to crack—or finally decide to fight.
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