‘The Shepherdess: The Trail of Yellow Roses’ by JM Landels

The funds Grandmère Paris and the Duchesse d’Orléans had vouchsafed me were perilously low by the time Luc and I spotted the tumbledown walls of La Tectume. From the road far down in the valley, the partially ruined château fort was barely distinguishable from the jagged rocks it perched upon. One more night in a roadside inn before we had to begin that withering climb.

There was a single pistole and a few deniers in my purse. Once we reached the château we would find refuge, I had been told, but whether it would come without a price I didn’t know. Nonetheless, we couldn’t tackle that steep road without a night’s sleep, a meal, and some hay for Luc’s donkey, Babette. Her milk had kept us from going hungry more than once on this exhausting journey, but her hips were showing more prominently, and the roll of fat on her neck had disappeared. A sheep will stop giving milk when she runs out of fat, and Babette’s udder was smaller even than a ewe’s right now.

It took the remainder of the afternoon to find an inn, for this was not the main road south to Spain. On our route from Paris, we had taken neither the westerly roads through Toulouse nor the easterly to Montpellier, but instead had walked due south, through tiny hameaux, farmlands, hills, and forests no doubt rife with wolves, bears, and criminals. Fortunately, Jacques and Babette were our guardians, and no marauder, animal or human, got past the double alarum of barking wolfhound and braying ass. It had been a long, slow journey that hardened our feet and our bodies, and an abandoned-looking inn was luxury enough for us.