The Moon and the Sun

by Vonda McIntyre

  Though Mlle de la Croix was entirely innocent, rumors of a liaison with the King could work only to her benefit. Lucien wished His Majesty would in fact form such a liaison. His connection with Mme de Maintenon, drawing him deep into piety, did little to sustain his vital spirit.

  “She may require another bloodletting tomorrow, to augment the cure.” Fagon tilted the basin. Liquid blood moved beneath the clotted skin.

  Félix probed the blood with his finger, breaking the elastic surface. Fagon righted the basin as the blood flowed over the edge and stained the carpet.

  “Her blood is far too thick, as you must observe,” Fagon said, “but I shall balance her bodily humours.” He chuckled. “Though she may bite my finger off!”

  “She tried to bite me, too,” Lorraine said as they walked away. “The minx.” He chuckled. “Like a trapped animal. But she has quite trapped my heart.”

  All alone, Mlle de la Croix lay crying in a tangle of bedclothes and bloody lint, her face hidden in the crook of her elbow. She heard or felt Lucien standing beside her. She reached weakly toward him.

  “Dear God, please, no more—”

  She touched his arm, fumbling. A bloodstain widened on the bandage. Lucien took her hand.

  “Oh!” She drew away, shocked and startled. Her hair fell in damp untidy strands around her drained face. “Forgive me… I thought you were my brother.”

  “I will call him.”

  “No—! I don’t want to see him.”

  “Do you feel better? Calmer? Cured of delusions?”

  “I don’t see delusions! I can talk with the sea woman! You must believe me, sir—if you don’t, why did you take such a risk on her behalf?”

  “His Majesty does as he pleases,” Count Lucien said. “I only offered him the rationale.”

  “Is that the only reason you spoke?”

  Lucien did not reply.

  “Very well,” she whispered. “You care for nothing but His Majesty. You spoke because you know he mustn’t murder the sea woman—he mustn’t risk his immortal soul!”

  “Sleep,” Lucien said, preferring not to continue a conversation that took this direction. “Dr. Fagon will return in the morning.”

  “Do you want me to die of bleeding, like my father?”

  Her voice fell to a horrified whisper. Lucien regretted dismissing her courage, for everyone he had ever known possessed a secret terror. As far as Lucien was concerned, fearing physicians was perfectly rational.

  “Do you hate me?” she whispered.

  “Of course I do not hate you.”

  “Don’t let him bleed me again,” she said. “Please.”

  “You do ask too much of me.” If the King ordered Mlle de la Croix to be bled, Lucien could do nothing to stop it. He devoted himself to carrying out Louis’ wishes, not to hindering them.

  “Please. Please promise me.” She struggled up, clutching his hand with awful desperation. Fear and pain had leached the intelligence from her face. “Please help me. I have great need of a friend.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Give me your word.”

  “Very well,” he said, against his better judgment, but moved by her fear. “I give you my word.”

  She collapsed, still holding his hand, trembling. She closed her eyes. Her agitation calmed; her fingers relaxed.

  Lucien sighed, and smoothed her sweat-darkened hair.

  Marie-Josèphe drifted, awake, asleep, aware of Count Lucien, comforted by his promise, aware of the denizens of her imagination, afraid to see them in her dreams. She feared sleep, but she shrank from waking.

  When she woke, moonlight spilled through the window, pooling on the floor like molten silver. Count Lucien had gone. Haleeda slept beside her, holding her, a welcome warmth. Dr Félix must have forgotten his threat to bleed Marie-Josèphe’s sister; Haleeda’s arms bore neither wound nor bandage. Yves dozed, slumped over a sheaf of papers. He would have a terrible crick in his neck in the morning.

  Yves and Haleeda must have undressed her, for she wore only her blood-spattered shift. She hoped Haleeda had asked Count Lucien to withdraw; she hoped she had not been unclothed before the King’s adviser. She was no royal lady, to be dressed by tailors and observed by men at the most intimate times of her life.

  She sat up, weak and light-headed.

  Yves woke. “Sister—are you recovered?”

  “How could you let him bleed me?”

  “It was for your own good.”

  He had found her sketches. He flicked through them, his face impassive.

  “The sea woman told me that story,” Marie-Josèphe said. “The true story of the hunt. You caught three sea people. Not two. They struggled. The sailors killed one—”

  “Hush,” he said. “I told you the story.”

  “You never did. They killed one. They ate his flesh. You ate—”

  “—the flesh of an animal! It was delicious. Why shouldn’t I eat it?”

  “You claim to love truth! But when you hear it, you deny it. Please believe me. Yves, my dear brother, what’s changed so, that you have no faith in me?”

  Her agitation woke Haleeda. “Mlle Marie?” She pushed herself up on her elbow, blinking sleepily. Marie-Josèphe took her hand, desperate for her comfort.

  “The sea monsters are beasts, created for the use of man,” Yves said. He sat next to her on her bed. “You should retire from court. Too much attention has distracted you. In a convent, you’d be safe from this agitation of your spirits.”

  “No.”

  “You’d be happy, back in the convent.”

  “She’d never be happy there!” Haleeda cried.

  “For five years, I read no books,” Marie-Josèphe said. “The sisters said knowledge would corrupt me, like Eve.” She had tried to forgive her brother his awful decision, but she could not let him repeat it. “I heard no music. The sisters forbade it. They said, Women must be silent in the house of God. The Pope demands it. I did without books, without studying—I had no choice! I couldn’t stop my thoughts, my questions, though I couldn’t speak them. Mathematics—!” Her laugh was wild and angry. “They said I was writing spells! I heard music that was never there, I could never stop it, no matter how I prayed and fasted. I called myself a madwoman, a sinner…” She looked into his face. “M. Newton replied to my letter—but they burned it, unopened, before me. How could you send me there, where every moment tortured me? I thought you loved me—”

  “I wanted you to be safe.” His beautiful eyes filled with sudden tears. He put his arms around her, relenting, hugging her protectively. “And now, I’ve asked too much of you—the work is too difficult.”

  “I love the work!” she cried. “I do it gladly. I do it well, and I’m not a fool. You must listen to me!”

  “I have the obligation to guide you. Your affection for the sea monster is unnatural.”

  “My affection for her has nothing to do with what she told me. You know her stories are true.”

  He knelt beside her bed. He took her arm.

  “Pray with me,” he said.

  Prayer will comfort and sustain me, Marie-Josèphe thought.

  Marie-Josèphe slipped to the floor and knelt. She folded her hands, bowed her head, and waited for the welcome embrace of God’s presence.

  “Odelette, join us, pray for Marie-Josèphe’s recovery.”

  “I will not!” Haleeda said. “I’ll never pray like a Christian again, for I am a free woman, and a Mahometan, and my name is Haleeda!” Hugging herself for warmth, she turned her back and stared into the moonlit gardens.

  “Dear God,” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “Dear God…”

  Does God have a plan for my suffering? she wondered. But my suffering is nothing, compared to the martyrs—compared to the despair of the sea woman. Other people undergo bleeding without a second thought. I should submit to it bravely.

  Instead, she had forced Lorraine to behave in a way that destroyed her high opinion of him. She no longer care
d what Lorraine thought. She had diminished herself in Count Lucien’s estimation, which mattered to her a great deal.

  “Dear God,” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “Dear God, please speak to me, please direct me. Tell me what is right and proper for me to do.”

  She begged, she even dared to hope, for a reply. But in the face of her entreaties, God remained silent.

  18

  MOONLIGHT FLOODED THROUGH the window and pooled on the floor. Marie-Josèphe slipped out of bed. She stood still; a dizzy weakness passed.

  Haleeda slept soundly; Yves was gone. Shivering, Marie-Josèphe slung Lorraine’s cloak over her shoulders and crept into the dressing room. She held herself up by leaning against the wall, by grasping the doorjamb.

  Lorraine’s perfume surrounded her. Her stomach clenched. She flung down the cloak and struggled not to vomit. She would never wear the cloak again, no matter how soft and warm it was. She would burn it, if she had a fire.

  She opened the window and gazed into the night. The moon, two days from full, loomed over the sea woman’s prison. Marie-Josèphe tried to sing, but she could only whisper.

  Yet the sea woman heard her, and replied.

  She’s still alive, Marie-Josèphe thought. Bless Count Lucien—

  Marie-Josèphe snatched up her pen. A new scene for the cantata poured from the sea woman’s song. The pen sprayed tiny grace-notes above the staff. The candle puddled and drowned.

  She wrote the last few notes and waved the page in the air to dry the ink. The cantata was complete.

  Marie-Josèphe drew the tapestry from the harpsichord and flung it around her shoulders. She opened the keyboard.

  In the shadowy dawn, tears running down her face, she played the story of the sea people’s tragedy.

  Lucien attended the King’s awakening, but his thoughts were elsewhere. While Dr. Fagon did his work, Lucien blotted the perspiration from His Majesty’s forehead. He bowed to His Majesty when the King led the procession to Mass, but Lucien did not follow. A church was the one place where he would not follow his King.

  “Dr. Fagon.”

  Lucien and the First Physician were alone in His Majesty’s bedroom. The doctor looked up from studying the results of His Majesty’s regular purge.

  “M. de Chrétien,” he said, bowing.

  Count Lucien returned Fagon’s salutation with a nod.

  “Mlle de la Croix is better, I trust? I shall look in on her later.” Fagon shook his head with disapproval. “No wonder she broke down, with all her unwomanly tasks. Someone should speak to her brother. I’ve planned an extensive course of bloodletting.”

  “That will not be necessary,” Lucien said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Fagon exclaimed.

  “You’ll let no more blood from Mlle de la Croix.”

  “Sir, are you instructing me in my profession?”

  “I’m instructing you that she wants no more treatment, and I’m instructing you to respect her wishes.”

  Lucien spoke quietly. Dr. Fagon was well aware of Lucien’s influence with His Majesty, the favor the King showed him, and the peril of ignoring him.

  Fagon spread his hands. “If His Majesty commands—”

  “It is unlikely in the extreme that His Majesty would observe your treatment.”

  “It is likely in the extreme that His Majesty’s spies will observe!”

  “No one need be present who might betray you. Can you not trust M. Félix?”

  Fagon considered, then bowed again. “I shall observe your instructions, subject only—”

  Lucien raised one eyebrow.

  “—only to His Majesty’s presence.”

  Lucien bowed in return. He could not ask Dr. Fagon to defy the King’s orders, in the King’s presence. He hoped Mlle de la Croix would not ask it of him.

  The harpsichord traced the story of the sea monster hunt. When Marie-Josèphe began the cantata, she thought the story altogether heroic. With every revision, it had become more tragic.

  She closed the keyboard and gazed at the smooth wood. She was spent.

  Somehow, somehow, I must make His Majesty see what he’s doing, she thought. He loves music. If he would only listen to the sea woman, he might see what I see, he might understand her.

  The door of the dressing room opened. Startled, Marie-Josèphe looked up. She expected no one. Her sister had gone to attend Mary of Modena; Yves had gone to attend the King’s awakening.

  Gazing at her ardently, Lorraine stood in the doorway between her bedroom and Yves’ dressing room. Dark circles under his eyes marred his beauty.

  “Do you enter a lady’s room without invitation, sir, or chaperone?”

  “What need have we of chaperones, my dear? We needed none on the Grand Canal.”

  His velvet cloak, sadly wrinkled and salt-stained, lay in a heap in the corner. He retrieved it and shook it out.

  “You’ve had your use out of my cloak, I see.”

  “You may have it back.”

  He held its collar to his face. “Your perfume scents it. Your perfume, your sweat, the secrets of your body…”

  She turned away, embarrassed, flustered.

  “May I have not even a smile? The King offers me as a sacrifice to your beauty, but you break my heart. I lay my finest garment at your feet—but it is nothing!” He flung the cloak to the floor. “I destroy myself with worry about you—” He stroked one finger across his cheek, beneath the dark circle.

  “You destroy yourself,” Marie-Josèphe said drily, “by revelling all night in Paris.”

  Lorraine laughed, delighted. “Dr. Fagon did you good! You are yourself—and cured of your fantasies, I trust.” He leaned on the harpsichord, gazing soulfully at her.

  “You helped Dr. Fagon steal my strength. If the sea woman dies, I’ll never recover it.”

  “When she’s gone, you’ll find another cause to occupy your mind. And your heart. A husband. A lover.” He moved nearer, feigning interest in the musical score.

  “It isn’t proper for you to be here, sir.”

  Behind her, he pressed against her back. His scent smothered her. He laid his hands on her shoulders, slipped his fingers beneath her hair, beneath her shift, cupped his hands around her breasts. His hands were hot on her skin. She froze, with shock and cold and outrage.

  “Mlle de la Croix,” Count Lucien said from the doorway. “I see that you are protected from surgeons.”

  His voice broke her paralysis. Count Lucien bowed and disappeared. Marie-Josèphe broke from Lorraine’s grasp.

  “Count Lucien!” She ran after him. He limped toward the stairs. “I—the Chevalier—it wasn’t—”

  “It wasn’t?” Count Lucien said. “That’s a shame.”

  “A—a shame?”

  Count Lucien faced her, leaning on his walking stick, gazing up quizzically.

  “His Majesty himself favors the match. Lorraine belongs to an illustrious family, but he is perpetually in need of money. You will have a generous dowry from His Majesty. An alliance between you and Lorraine will repair both your fortunes.”

  “I have no amorous feelings for the Chevalier de Lorraine.”

  “What has that to do with marriage?”

  “I scorn him!”

  “Against the King’s will?”

  “I’ll never marry him!” Marie-Josèphe shivered, seeing Lorraine’s intense blue eyes above her, while the surgeon’s blade slashed her. She slipped her right hand beneath her left sleeve. The bandage was wet with blood.

  “Perhaps you should tell that to Monsieur.”

  “Why would I tell His Majesty’s brother?”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because I have—because I wish you to think well of me.”

  “I think well enough of you.”

  Lorraine slammed the door of Marie-Josèphe’s room and sauntered toward them. His cloak swept from one shoulder.

  “The jester and the wild Carib maiden,” he said, laughing. “What a combination!”
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  Count Lucien stepped forward, holding his cane at his side as if it were a sword. If they fought, Lorraine would surely wound or kill him. Lorraine wore a real sword, while Count Lucien carried only his dirk.

  “You are very rude, sir!” Marie-Josèphe said.

  Lorraine laughed. “Chrétien, is she your protector?”

  “Apparently she is. I trust yours is as valiant.”

  “I have a sovereign who forbids duelling. I choose to obey him—in all things.” He stalked past them and descended the stairs.

  “I’m so sorry.” Marie-Josèphe leaned against the wall. “I spoke out of turn.”

  A handsbreadth of edged steel gleamed between the staff and the handle of Count Lucien’s walking-stick. Count Lucien pushed and twisted the handle; the sword cane clicked; the blade disappeared.

  “Lorraine is quite right,” Count Lucien said. “His Majesty forbade duelling. No doubt you’ve saved my head.”

  “You’re making fun of me, sir—”

  “On the contrary.”

  “—when I hope for your regard.”

  “My regard, and more,” Count Lucien said. “For your own happiness, you must set your sights elsewhere.”

  Marie-Josèphe returned to her room, pressing through the ruins of all her fine plans. She refused to think about what Count Lucien had said. She returned to the harpsichord, to the one thing that had gone right. She gathered together the score of the sea woman’s cantata.

  I’ve done justice to her music, Marie-Josèphe thought. When His Majesty hears it, and I tell him who it belongs to, he must believe what I say about her.

  She still felt light-headed, but she no longer feared she would faint. She carried the score through the chateau to the musicians’ room. She peeked in, hoping to find M. Minoret, the King’s strict music master of the third quarter, or M. de la Lande, the charming master of the fourth quarter. For His Majesty’s celebration, all four chapel masters and all the King’s musicians gathered at Versailles. His Majesty’s guests were never without music.

  Master Domenico Scarlatti sat alone at the harpsichord. Marie-Josèphe waited, enjoying the unfamiliar music, till he finished with a cascade of embellishments, stopped, looked out at the beautiful day. He sighed heavily. Staring out the window, he fingered variations one-handed.