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to him. Her father was pale and clutching his chest.
    “I will be fine, little one,” he said slowly.
    Petite wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead with her hand.
    Jean appeared. “Papa?” He let his father’s boot out of the stirrup and took up Hongre’s reins.
    “Laurent!” Françoise cried out.
    Petite looked up to see her mother running with her hoops lifted.
    “That horse,” her father gasped, struggling to sit.
    Petite felt a warm breath at her shoulder: Diablo. “Ho, boy,” she said, touching his nose. “Back,” she commanded, holding up one hand. The White took five steps back, and stood.
    Her father crossed himself, his eyes on the stallion.
    “Laurent, you are not to die,” Françoise said, panting from her run. She knelt beside her fallen husband, her face powder streaked.
    Die? Petite closed her eyes, praying silently.
    I N THE DARK DAYS that followed, Laurent slowly recovered. “I told you not to go near that horse,” he reprimanded Petite from his bed.
    “Forgive me, Father,” Petite said as she stoked the fire in the massive stone fireplace. She stood, tracing with her fingers the words etched into the mantel: Ad principem ut ad ignem amor indissolubilis. For the King, love like an altar fire, eternal.
    “Little one?”
    Petite turned.
    “Come here.” He patted the bed.
    Petite climbed up and sat beside her father, chewing on the end of one of her braids. An image of the Virgin had been propped on the candle stand next to the bed. Beside it was the stoppered bottle her mother had made of Laurent’s water,a fingernail and a lock of his hair together with two nails and two rosebush thorns. It would vanquish the evil spirit that had tried to kill her father, she’d told Petite—but Petite feared that she herself was that evil spirit and had twice uncorked the bottle while her father slept.
    “Tell me how it came about,” he said, taking the braid out of her mouth. “With the White.”
    Petite shrugged one shoulder and grinned. (She knew she could charm him.) “I prayed, and it just happened,” she said. It was a partial truth, but mostly a lie.
    “Praise be,” Laurent said. “But promise me this: don’t ride him, not until I’m well enough to coach you.”
    T HREE DAYS LATER , Laurent came slowly down the winding stairs, holding onto his wife for support. Jean, Petite, the tutor and the household servants all cheered as he emerged into the sitting room.
    “Behold,” Laurent said, like one risen from the dead. He lifted his nightcap as if it were a hat. He hadn’t been shaven and looked like a ruffian.
    Petite was filled with delight. Soon she could ride Diablo again.
    I N THE CONFINES OF THE PADDOCK , Petite rode Diablo as her father watched. Proudly, she took the stallion through the walk, trot and canter. He went smoothly, without overreaching or striking one foot upon another.
    “A horse for a prince,” Laurent said, shaking his head.
    My horse, Petite thought, for the stallion would not allow anyone but her near.
    Thereafter, weather and her father’s health permitting, Petite schooled Diablo every afternoon. He was not so much skittish as eager, and she learned to focus his restiveness, teaching him to tread in large rings, to stop, retire and advance. Much to her father’s amazement, he learned to perform a capriole and could even bound aloft on all four (which Petite loved best). After each lesson, she rubbed his neck with a light, soft hand, stroking as the hair lay.
    By mid-April, when the grass was green and full of sun, Diablo was put into the back pasture, his provender supplemented with baked loaves of peas and meal. There, following her father’s instructions, Petite accustomed him to rough ground for an hour or two a day—first at a foot pace, and then at a trot, and finally at a swift trot mingled with a few strokes of gallop. Then, and only then, did Laurent deem the stallion ready to ride into a newly ploughed field, thereby teaching him to