The sea monster’s song followed her, discordant and eerie. She shivered. The statues loomed, white ghosts, and their shadows spread black pools through the darkness. Marie-Josèphe’s happiness and pride dissolved into the sea monster’s fierce music.
“Yves—?” Her brother stood pale as the marble, pale as death, bleeding from his hands and forehead. He stood in a pool of blood. She saw him as clearly as if the music were light. And then she did not see him at all.
The music stopped.
“Yves? Where are you?”
Marie-Josèphe’s tears blurred the bright chateau windows, the torches’ flames. She dashed the back of her hand against her eyes and raised her skirts above her ankles and fled.
She rushed through the chateau, tears streaming down her face, her shoes wet with dew. She had enough presence of mind to use the back stairs, hoping no one would see her.
I must stop, she thought frantically, I must stop crying, I must walk instead of run, I must sweep along with the hem of my skirt brushing the floor, so no one will see me and say, She’s just a peasant, hiking her skirts up around her knees.
She ran up the stairs to the attic, choking back her sobs, her breath ragged. She threw open the door to Yves’ dressing room. A single candle lit it. Yves buttoned his cassock, while a servant in the King’s livery stood impatiently nearby.
Marie-Josèphe flung herself into her brother’s arms.
“Sister, what’s wrong?” He held her, comforting her with his strength.
“I thought you were dead, I thought—I saw—”
“Dead?” he said. “Of course I’m not dead.” He smiled. “I’m not even asleep, much as I’d like to be. What’s frightened you so?”
“Your worship,” the servant said.
“Hush, I’ll be along.”
Yves hugged her again, solid and dependable. He found a handkerchief and wiped the tear stains from her cheeks, as if she were a child who had stubbed her toe.
“I thought…” The visions that had spun around her in the darkness of the garden vanished in the candlelight of his room. “I was feeding the sea monster…”
“In the dark? No wonder you were frightened. You shouldn’t go into the gardens alone at night. Take Odelette with you.”
“Yes, you’re right, it must have been the dark,” Marie-Josèphe said, all the time thinking, How strange, I never feared the dark before.
“Please, your worship—”
“Don’t call me that!” Yves said to the servant. “I’m coming.”
“Where are you going?” Marie-Josèphe asked.
“To His Majesty. To the sea monster.”
The Fountain luminesced, filling the tent with an eerie glow like fox-fire. Triton’s trumpet shone, and the hooves of the dawn horses, and their muzzles, as if they galloped on cold fire and breathed it from their nostrils.
Marie-Josèphe lit the lanterns; the glow vanished. The sea monster whistled and hummed and splashed, luring Marie-Josèphe to her.
“I can’t play with you now, sea monster,” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “His Majesty is coming!” She checked the screens of heavy silk to be sure the sea monster could not see past them, then pulled aside the dead monster’s canvas shroud, exposing the carcass, spilling sawdust and melting ice to the floor. Preserving fluids and caked blood stained the canvas. The monster’s ribs lay exposed, stripped of skin and muscle. One arm was flayed to the bone, and the leg on the same side.
Outside the tent, His Majesty’s wheeled cart creaked; hooves crunched in gravel; footsteps tramped. Yves greeted the King and Count Lucien. The King’s deaf-mutes pushed his chair into the tent. Count Lucien walked beside His Majesty. Four carriers followed with a sedan chair hung with white velvet and gold tassels. Marie-Josèphe hugged Lorraine’s dark cloak around her and stood by her drawing box, hoping to attract as little attention as possible.
“I think it best to examine the sea monster’s internal organs in private,” the King said.
“Your Majesty,” Yves said, “the sea monsters are ordinary animals.”
The deaf-mutes lifted the cart onto the plank floor and pushed it to the lab table. The sedan chair followed; the carriers lowered it and fled the tent, bowing.
His Majesty did not bother to dismiss his deaf-mutes; he treated them, as always, as if they hardly existed. Count Lucien remained by his side, leaning easily on his staff. Marie-Josèphe returned his polite nod with a quick curtsy. Yves helped His Holiness from the palanquin and conducted him to an armchair.
Exhaustion paled the old man’s face, and he leaned heavily on Yves’ arm. His Majesty swung himself out of the cart and hobbled to the dissection table, leaning only a little on Count Lucien’s shoulder. He gazed with fascination at the creature. His Majesty showed no signs of having been up all night; even the swelling of his gout had eased.
“Every feature I’ve studied so far,” Yves said, “every muscle, every bone, has its match within every other furred creature known to natural philosophy.”
“Father de la Croix,” His Majesty said, “I did not charge you to find what is common about the sea monsters. I charged you to find what is unique.”
“I will look, Your Majesty.” Yves took up his heaviest lancet. “Are you ready, sister?”
Marie-Josèphe settled a fresh sheet of paper.
Yves sliced open the creature’s belly, exposing its viscera. The intestines and stomach lay flat and shrivelled, empty of food. Perhaps the male sea monster had successfully resisted being force fed. Marie-Josèphe regretted the creature’s death, but she was glad the organs would not explode upon His Majesty and His Holiness when Yves pierced them.
“The intestines are rather short for a creature that must sustain itself mostly on seaweed, with an occasional garnish of fish,” Yves said, “by which I surmise that seaweed is easily digested.”
He cut the intestines out delicately, measuring and inspecting, taking small samples, placing the organs in jars of spirits. Marie-Josèphe drew as best she could in lantern light. The sea monster’s intestine sported an appendix, unusual in most animals. Yves dissected out the kidneys, the pancreas, the bladder; he even sought stomach-stones and kidney-stones. He found nothing unusual or notable in the lower abdomen. He might have been dissecting any carcass, or even the corpse of a man.
His Majesty watched with increasing impatience; His Holiness with increasing discomfort. Count Lucien watched unmoved.
With a heavy pair of shears, Yves cut open the ribs at the breastbone. He separated the rib cage, exposing the lungs and the heart.
“It is as I thought,” Yves said. He probed delicately into the chest, moving aside lobes of the lungs to expose the heart and the various glands. “The creature presents no attributes of the fish, neither gills nor swim-bladder. It is very like the dugong. And as you have seen, Your Majesty, the sea monster possesses internal organs normal to all mammals.”
“Father de la Croix, whether the monster is a fish or a beast is of no interest to me. What is of interest is its organ of immortality.”
“I’ve found no evidence of such an organ, Sire. Immortality, like the transmutation of gold, is the province of alchemy, abhorred by the Church and by natural philosophy.”
“You dismiss ancient tales cavalierly, Father de la Croix,” His Majesty said. “How did you come to accept this undertaking, if you believe my quest futile?”
“I wished to please Your Majesty,” Yves said, taken aback by the King’s sharp tone. “The quest for the sea monsters was anything but futile. As for the organ of immortality, it exists, or it does not exist. My beliefs are immaterial.”
Pope Innocent stared at him, exhaustion transformed by outrage.
“That is to say, I might form a hypothesis, but it must be tested…” Yves’ voice trailed off. His quest for knowledge had for an instant overcome his restraint; he was doing himself no credit with Pope Innocent.
“If you believe the organ does not exist,” His Majesty said, ignoring Yves’
embarrassment, “you surely will not find it.”
“If the monsters impart everlasting life to those who consume them, Sire,” Yves said, “why, how many sailors would be a thousand years old?”
Louis waved away the objections. “Sailors live a hard life. Protection against old age and disease would never save a man from accident or drowning.”
“Cousin,” Innocent said, “perhaps your natural philosopher has the right of it. God drove us from Eden, after all, where we were immortal. Now we are mortal, but we live in the hopes of joining Him in everlasting life.”
“If God created an immortality organ, and commanded us to use beasts as we will—then it is His will that we become immortal.”
Innocent frowned thoughtfully, troubled. “Earthly immortality would be a burden, not a satisfaction.” He hesitated. “Yet, if one were called to continue God’s work—”
“As I am,” His Majesty said.
“—one would submit…however burdened by Earthly flesh.”
Yves continued his exploration of the heart and the lungs. At the top of the chest, beneath the upper ribs, the highest lobe of the lung resisted his probe. He exclaimed wordlessly and pulled the lobe farther into view.
“This is unique.”
Marie-Josèphe glanced from the gutted sea monster to her brother, to Innocent, to His Majesty. All of them stared at the unusual lobe of the lung. The color differed, and the texture. A tangle of blood vessels covered its surface.
Only Count Lucien paid no attention to the carcass. He paid his attention to the King, gazing at his sovereign with hope, and relief, and love.
Yves lifted the unusual structure and cut it free of the normal lung.
“You have found it,” Louis said. “What else could it be?”
Marie-Josèphe hurried up the Green Carpet after Yves, holding her drawing box tight against her chest, protecting the record of her brother’s discoveries. Yves strode along before her. Far ahead, His Majesty’s deaf-mutes pushed his rolling cart at a run, and Pope Innocent’s chair carriers struggled to keep up. Count Lucien’s elegant grey Arabian trotted beside them. Early mist swirled at their heels. Yves might keep up with them, but Marie-Josèphe never could. She broke into a run, glad she was not wearing court dress. Ten paces ahead, Yves paused and waited impatiently. Torches gilded the chateau, cast shadows across the gardens, and haloedYves’ hair.
“Hurry, or we’ll get no sleep at all—you do want me to attend His Majesty’s awakening?” He smiled, teasing her.
She looked at the ground, embarrassed all over again for failing him yesterday.
They climbed the back stairs to the attic and their tiny apartment. As they ascended, a young courtier muffled in cloak and half-mask passed, creeping quietly down. He ignored their salute, as if the mask made him invisible.
Yawning and stretching, Yves disappeared into his bedroom to nap for a few hours.
Odelette and Hercules slept soundly in Marie-Josèphe’s bed, cuddled together, warm and safe. Marie-Josèphe put aside the temptation to join them in their comfortable nest.
If I fall asleep now, she thought, I shall never wake in time to rouse Yves. Besides, I’ve not done a moment’s work on the dissection sketches.
In Yves’ dressing room, she lit tallow candles and settled herself at the table to begin the painstaking task of redrawing the sketches with pen and ink. As she arranged the papers, she found the equation she had scribbled and scratched out. Her thoughts wandered to the problems that fascinated her, the description of God’s creations—God’s will, perhaps—in precise terms. She wrote a second equation for predicting the motion of rustling leaves; she saw that it would not work, either, even when she added the effect of gravity.
This is as difficult a problem as predicting the actions of my dear leaf-rustler Madame! Marie-Josèphe though, amused.
She rubbed out the equation, and turned her attention to Yves’ drawings.
At six o’clock, Marie-Josèphe put several finished drawings away and slipped into her room to change clothes; she and Odelette must attend Lotte; they must all help Madame dress; they must gather in the antechamber outside His Majesty’s bedroom and join the procession to Mass.
I mustn’t fail my duties to Mademoiselle, Marie-Josèphe thought. Not two days in a row. I must attend Mass—
She had promised to attend last night; she had forgotten.
Odelette’s soft breathing was the only sound. Hercules slipped in through the open window, leaving the curtain a handsbreadth open; he stretched and yowled, demanding breakfast. Gray morning light from the west-facing window woke Odelette. She blinked, her long lashes brushing her cheeks, beautiful even a moment out of sleep.
“Have you sat up all night, Mlle Marie?” Odelette whispered. “Come to bed, you can rest a little while.”
“It’s time to get up,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Help me change my dress—and you must do my hair. Mademoiselle wants you this morning.”
Sitting up, Odelette cried out. She drew her hand from beneath the covers. Blood smeared her fingertips.
“Quick, Mlle Marie, before I stain the bedclothes—”
Marie-Josèphe flung open her storage chest, snatched up a handful of soft clean rags, and took them to Odelette.
Odelette thrust the pad between her legs to soak up her monthly flow, then curled miserably beneath the blankets. She always suffered terribly from her monthlies.
“I’m so sorry, Mlle Marie—”
“You must stay in bed,” Marie-Josèphe said. She put Hercules beside Odelette and stroked his soft fur, the tabby stripes of two textures, till he gave up asking for his breakfast and snuggled warm against Odelette’s sore back. “In bed, with our bed-warmer.” Odelette smiled, though her lips trembled. “And I’ll send you some broth. You must drink it, but share a little with Hercules.”
“Mlle Marie, you must wear a towel today.”
She and Odelette had always begun their monthlies on the same day. They had been apart so long, surely that rule had been lost with distance? But when Marie-Josèphe counted, Odelette was right. Marie-Josèphe tied a rolled towel between her legs and struggled into her grand habit. She must not spoil another dress.
Poor Odelette, her women’s troubles pained her so. Marie-Josèphe kissed her cheek.
Marie-Josèphe unbraided her hair and dressed it simply, without lace or ribbons. She looked like a naive colonial girl, but she could do no more without Odelette’s help.
In Yves’ room, she sat on the edge of his bed and shook him gently.
“Yves—brother, it’s time to get up.”
“I’m awake,” he mumbled.
Marie-Josèphe smiled fondly and shook him again. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and stretching.
“I am awake,” he said.
“I know.” She kissed his cheek. “I must fly, to Mademoiselle.”
She hurried down the attic stairs. She felt lucky not to suffer from her monthlies as Odelette did. If she had to keep to her bed, she would miss greeting His Majesty after his morning ceremony, she would miss following the King to Mass.
She would miss caring for the sea monster, and Yves might give her place to Chartres.
Lucien’s carriage flew along the Avenue de Paris and past the lines of visitors waiting to enter His Majesty’s gardens. The carriage followed the same route as Pope Innocent’s, all the way to the steps of the Marble Courtyard.
Despite the inconvenience—His Majesty seldom concerned himself with the convenience of his courtiers—the King permitted few carriages to enter the forecourt of the chateau. Lucien accepted the perquisite as the King intended, as a sign of esteem. He rode in his carriage more often than he might otherwise have done, to publicly take advantage of His Majesty’s favor.
His footman placed the steps and held the door. Lucien climbed down, leaning easily on his walking staff. He had not slept, but he had refreshed himself. Thanks to Sieur de Baatz’ salve, his leg had nearly healed; thanks to Juliette, thanks to the dist
ractions of calvados and stimulation, the pain in his back was quite tolerable.
His eight matched coach horses stood rock-still, bay coats and harness gleaming.
“Return to my chateau and put yourself at the disposal of Mme la Marquise,” Lucien said to his coachman. “She will wish to attend today’s picnic at His Majesty’s Menagerie.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lucien crossed the black and white marble of the courtyard, entered the chateau through its central doors, beneath the balcony of the King’s apartment, and took his usual route to His Majesty’s bedroom.
Waiting by his brother’s bed, Monsieur stifled a yawn. The duke d’Orléans often rode to Paris after the King’s evening entertainments, for he found Versailles constraining. On occasion, Lucien joined him. Though he did not share all Monsieur’s tastes, he appreciated the duke’s ability to enjoy himself. But for Lucien, the events of the previous night had been more rewarding than any diversion Monsieur might imagine.
This morning, everything was as it should be. No one could suspect last night of being extraordinary; no one could suspect the King had stayed awake all night seeking immortality. His Majesty performed the rituals of his awakening with his accustomed grace and dignity.
Lucien noted, with approval, that Yves de la Croix had ceased to spurn the privilege of fifth entry. The Jesuit bowed to His Majesty with adequate elegance. Lucien feared de la Croix had been brought too high too quickly, that his abrupt elevation would result in disaster for him and for his sister. Other men waited years for Fifth Entry.
Unlike His Majesty, de la Croix did look as if he had been up all night. Dark circles shadowed his eyes.
Perhaps the King had dozed since returning from the secret dissection, or perhaps he had lain awake considering the implications of Yves de la Croix’s discoveries.
His Majesty might never die, Lucien thought. If he never dies, the realm will never be subjected to Monseigneur’s reign. If he never dies, he will escape the influence of Mme de Maintenon. He will reinstate the Edict of Nantes. He will cease making war on his own people.
The Moon and the Sun Page 17
