‘The Shepherdess: Castres’ by JM Landels

The Road and the Rest

Sit back and enjoy this excerpt of JM Landels‘s latest instalment of The Shepherdess, ‘The Shepherdess: Castres’, as featured in Pulp Literature Issue 51. If this sneak peek interests you, be sure to pick up a copy of Issue 51, Summer 2026 to read the rest!

Here’s where we last left Toinette…

Toinette Berger is a shepherdess-turned-spy and a member of the mysterious Order of the Silver Branch. She has spent the last year of her apprenticeship at La Tectume, a refuge belonging to the Order and hidden in a seemingly abandoned château-fort in the low Pyrenees. This period of rest comes to an end when her mistress the Countess is summoned to Versailles by royal command, enforced by Nicolas Gabriel de la Reynie. After inadvertently adopting a young goatherd in Narbonne, Toinette and her companions, Henri and Luc, set out on the road to Orléans.

The Shepherdess: Castres

by JM Landels

We were three or four leagues west of Narbonne when we were overtaken on the road by a team of bays pulling de la Reynie’s carriage. The driver shouted at us to yield the road, but we took our time moving into a file as he held back his champing horses. If he had to take his left wheels into the ditch to get past us, we weren’t sorry, except for the jolting it gave Madame.

The window shutter slid up and her porcelain hand gripped the sill. “Mon Dieu, Gabriel,” she said, “Qu’est-ce que ce passe?” Her lovely face appeared as the carriage passed by, and I met her eyes. She smiled and winked at me, then called to the driver, “How long, do you think, m’sieur, till we reach Toulouse?”

“Five hours or so, Madame, if there are no more slowdowns.” He swivelled his head to glare at us.

The carriage regained the road in front of us and the driver whipped the horses back into a trot.

“Henri,” I hissed. “Will you not do something? Are we just letting them drive away with her?”

“Do what, mamselle? The coachman is armed, and de la Reynie is no mean soldier himself.”

“Lâche,” I muttered.

“And there’s that.” He pointed behind us to a rider galloping full tilt. 

“Yield,” shouted the rider as the dun horse — the same that had been tethered to the carriage this morning in Narbonne — went thundering past.

The dun horse caught up with the coach, which slowed to a walk again while the rider conferred with the passenger on the left side. While he did that, Madame’s hand appeared outside the window again and dropped something that flashed red in the sunlight.

I resisted the urge to trot ahead to retrieve it, for there was no guarantee Reynie was not looking back. Instead I kept my eye pinned on the spot by the gnarled olive tree on the roadside, where the speck of red had fallen, and forced Habibi to walk. 

“Look for something red,” I instructed my companions when we reached the tree. But no such blossom showed in the tall dry grass.

“Jacques.” I summoned the hound to Bibi’s side and held Madame’s kerchief — the one on which she had written enigmatic instructions — for him to smell. He tried to take it with his grizzled muzzle, but I snatched my hand away and pointed to the grass. “Cherche-la,” I commanded — with faint hope, for he was a deerhound, not a bloodhound or terrier. He lifted a quizzical ear and cocked his head at me. “Madame!” I said, and pointed again at the grassy roadside. “Find her!”

Read the rest of this story in Pulp Literature Issue 51, Summer 2026!

JM Landels is torn between travelling the world to teach writing and swordfighting, and never leaving her idyllic farm in Langley, BC. Her debut series, fantasy bestseller Allaigna’s Song: Overture and the sequels, Aria and Chorale, are available from Pulp Literature Press and most booksellers. You can follow her adventures with pen and sword at jmlandels.stiffbunnies.com.