The Moon and the Sun

by Vonda McIntyre

  “His Majesty’s punishment worked to my great advantage,” he said. “He sent me with his embassy to Morocco. To learn diplomacy, he said. We travelled through Arabia, Egypt, the Levant.”

  “The greatest mathematicians in the world lived in Arabia,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Until M. Newton.”

  “I didn’t have the honor of meeting Arabic mathematicians,” Lucien said. “But I met sheiks and warriors and holy men. I rode with the Bedouins. My sword was forged in Damascus. I lived in a hareem.”

  “A hareem—but how?”

  “On our journey, we all fell ill, with a dreadful flux—I’ll spare you the details.”

  “I know the details.”

  “I am sorry to hear it. The Sultan took us into his household. A less brave and ethical man would have put us out to die. Some of us did die, but his altruism saved most of us. His physicians watched over the grown men. The women of the household cared for the boys, the pages, for in the house of a devout Mahometan, the men live in one part of the house, the women and girls in another. Young boys live in the women’s quarters until they reach a certain age and develop a certain attention.

  “As a youth,” Lucien said with dry directness, “I was rather small. In the chaos of illness and darkness and death, I was mistaken for a page of ten, rather than a young man of fifteen. No one in the embassy could say it was a mistake and call me back. We were too sick. I came to my senses all unaware, wondering if a god really did exist—”

  “Of course He does!”

  “Then He is Allah, and He brought me into His garden to mock my disbelief. I awoke in the women’s quarters.”

  “They made short work of putting you out, I’m certain.”

  “No—how could they? I’d be killed, or worse. The women—the Sultan’s wives, his daughters, his brothers’ wives, his sons’ wives—would be disgraced. They could be divorced. Or stoned to death.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “I did not. I stayed until the last day of the embassy, when I crept out over the rooftops and joined the caravan home. The women kept my secret. I became their secret. They were women of intelligence and kindness and passion, locked away from the world, kept at the mercy of men’s whims.”

  “And you were a youth of a certain age and attention.”

  “Indeed I was.”

  “Tempted into sin. At the mercy of their whims.”

  Lucien laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I honor their mercy and their whims. They awakened me. Before that time, I’d never lived for a moment when my body didn’t pain me.”

  “You’re no better than their husbands, who imprisoned them!” Marie-Josèphe cried. “You took your pleasure from them and placed them in danger.”

  “I took nothing. Ours was an exchange of gifts. My gifts were clumsy and ill-made to begin with, I admit, but they were sincere, and my beloved friends were patient. I learned nothing of diplomacy during those months. Instead, I learned the art of rapture. I learned how to give it and how to receive it. I learned how much more it’s worth when it’s both given and received.”

  Lucien fell silent. Marie-Josèphe tried to make herself feel disgusted and offended, as she knew she should, but his story moved her.

  How much I would have cherished a secret friend, in the convent, she thought. Not a man! Not for… Not for rapture. For affection, for conversation, for friendship, for all the things forbidden me because they would distract from the love of God. If a pagan, a heretic, had appeared in my cell and begged for asylum, I would have hidden her and protected her.

  “If you lived in rapture, why are you sad?” she demanded, for Lucien stared across the water with a far-away and melancholy expression.

  Lucien remained silent for so long, she thought he would not reply.

  “The amiable Sultan’s eldest son, the crown prince… He took a young wife, that is, a new concubine… She was fourteen, homesick, but she could never go home—she’d been enslaved, and sold. She had been used to liberty… Her gaze was like a trapped bird. We became friends.”

  He stopped to govern his voice.

  “She had as little experience as I. Her sister wives could tell her what to do to please her husband, when he demanded her presence and compelled her first submission. They could have told him how to please her, even when he claimed her virginity. But he never listened to their wisdom. He took her. He forced her. He raped her.”

  Lucien rubbed his hand across his forehead, hiding his eyes from the memory.

  “But, he was her husband,” Marie-Josèphe said as gently as she could. “He couldn’t rape—”

  “Don’t preach your ignorance to me.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “By their law—by your law—he couldn’t rape her. What she surrendered to was rape, all the worse because she couldn’t resist, she couldn’t object, she couldn’t refuse. Should we have comforted her by saying, Your husband acted within the law?”

  “It’s God’s will, M. de Chrétien, for women to suffer.” Marie-Josèphe hoped that explaining properly might bring Count Lucien to belief. “If she were a Christian, she would have understood and submitted willingly.”

  “I cannot fathom why you accept such arrant lunacy.” He spoke quietly. “If she were a Christian, you’d consign her to hell, for she killed herself.”

  Recovering from her dismay, Marie-Josèphe whispered, “I am so sorry. I’m sorry for your friend’s pain, for your grief, and for my inexcusable condescension.” She took his hand. He turned away, hiding his bright tears, but he permitted her touch.

  A rocket blazed across the sky.

  Fireworks burst in a great floating carpet from the Grand Canal to the chateau. A hundred colors painted patterns in the sky. The roof tiles trembled with the noise. In the midst of the roar of rockets, the spectators cheered.

  A burst of blue and gold formed a great expanding sphere. Small red rockets streaked over it. The low clouds reflected the light of the fireworks, an eerie, distorted mirror. The explosions formed a solid presence.

  Gunpowder smoke hovered, pungent and gritty. Lucien lay back on the warm tiles and gazed into the sky.

  “Is this what war is like?” Marie-Josèphe asked.

  “Not in the least. It lacks the mud, the discomfort, the fear. It lacks the screams of dying men and disemboweled horses. It lacks severed limbs, and death. It lacks the exhilaration, and the glory.”

  The fireworks continued, embroidering the sky with needles of color and light. A golden letter “L” and its mirror image, surrounded by flowers and starbursts, brightened the gardens to day.

  Marie-Josèphe leaped up, climbed over the edge of the roof, and disappeared. Startled, Lucien followed her. In her room, she struggled into her clothes. Standing on the window seat, the cat glaring at him slit-eyed from the shadows, Lucien said, “May I help you?”

  “I heard Sherzad,” Marie-Josèphe said.

  Lucien buttoned her dress, distracted from her words by the touch of her hair falling over her shoulders.

  “I didn’t think—she must be so frightened!” She pulled on her shoes and ran away before Lucien had retrieved his perruke from the lutenist. He put it on, thinking, You never should have revealed yourself to her without it.

  Sherzad swam in the center of the fountain. She screamed a challenge. The explosions assaulted her. The roof of the tent lit up with the light of bombs and guns, Greek fire and mortars, all the weapons that had been arrayed against the people of the sea for so many generations.

  She screamed again, shrieking with fury and grief.

  Marie-Josèphe ran into the tent.

  The Fountain gleamed with unearthly light. Apollo’s horses struck sparks from their hooves. Sherzad thrashed, sending up a fountain of luminescent water. With each blast of rockets, the shining intensified in waves.

  In a moment Marie-Josèphe was on the platform, covering her ears against the explosions, against Sherzad’s screams. She called out softly, reaching to Sherza
d through the sea woman’s fear and anger, through the dense fabric of sound.

  Sherzad moaned and swam to her. Glowing ripples marked her path. Marie-Josèphe held her hands and gazed into her eyes. Sherzad touched her with her voice.

  “I’m so sorry, dear Sherzad,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I’ve never seen fireworks, not like this, I had no idea—it’s all right, it isn’t war, it isn’t the guns and the mortars. You needn’t fight, you needn’t be afraid. The men of land do this for play.”

  Laboring up onto the platform, Sherzad lay in Marie-Josèphe’s arms, reassured and comforted. Her body shone as if lit from within. Marie-Josèphe stroked her long coarse glowing hair, combing out all the tangles except the knotted lock of her dead friend’s hair.

  She did not untangle the remembrance knot, but she stroked it thoughtfully. Light covered her hands.

  “Sherzad,” Marie-Josèphe said, “where did your friend get the ruby ring?”

  23

  SUNDAY MORNING, when the King walked to Mass with his family, Marie-Josèphe plunged through the crowd of petitioners and flung herself at his feet. She said nothing, but held a letter out to him in both hands. She feared he would not take it. She dared to look at him. He gazed at her, impassive, showing neither annoyance at her presence nor satisfaction at her submission.

  He took the letter.

  Lucien felt ridiculous, standing in the Marble Courtyard with red and white ribbons sewn to his hunting coat and breeches and falling around his feet. If it were spring, he thought, I could play the Maypole.

  “More ribbons, M. de Chrétien,” His Majesty said. “Your horse must be accustomed to the motion.” Louis wore a coat similarly decorated.

  “My horse is accustomed to the chaos of war, Your Majesty,” Lucien said. “Zelis won’t jibe at a few fancy banners.”

  Zelis stood by the courtyard stairs, tied by nothing more than her reins dropped to the ground, as the King’s Carrousel team galloped their mounts across the Place d’Armes, ribbons flapping from their wrists and shoulders and knees. The spotted Chinese horses bucked and squealed when the ribbons blew around their flanks. Their eyes showed white with fear or excitement. Nearby, the King’s master of horse tried to calm His Majesty’s snorting mount. It wanted to join its stablemates in playing at fear.

  “More ribbons,” His Majesty said.

  The royal tailor tacked more ribbons to Lucien’s good velvet hunting coat.

  His Majesty handed Lucien a folded piece of paper.

  Lucien opened Marie-Josèphe’s letter. He knew what it said. He had recommended its simplicity:

  Your Majesty:

  Sherzad offers you her ransom: a great treasure ship.

  “Explain this, if you please, M. de Chrétien,” said the King.

  “The sea people play among the wrecks, Your Majesty,” Lucien replied. “They use gold pieces and jewels as decoration. As toys for their children, who dandle pearl necklaces and drop them as they swim—for they can always find more.”

  “Mlle de la Croix says this to save the life of the sea monster. Enough ribbons!” The tailor backed away, bowing.

  “Yes. But I believe it’s true.”

  “And do you believe the sea monster’s stories as well?”

  “I believe Mlle de la Croix accurately describes what the sea woman sings to her.”

  “There’s no proof.”

  Lucien drew Sherzad’s ruby ring from his pocket and offered it to His Majesty. He had taken the ring from the retrieved coffin of the dead sea monster.

  “Sherzad carried this when she was captured.”

  “How do I know this?”

  “Because I say it’s true,” Lucien said, in a tone he had never before used to the King. He bowed stiffly. “May I withdraw, Your Majesty?”

  “Certainly not. The team misses you in the patterns.”

  Lucien left the Marble Courtyard and spoke to Zelis; she bowed for him to mount.

  The Arabian strode across the cobblestones of the Ministers’ Courtyard, trotted onto the hard-packed dirt of the Place d’Armes, and cantered into position in His Majesty’s Carrousel team. The ribbons waved wildly behind Lucien, their ends chattering in the wind of his speed. His Majesty rode out, his horse prancing nervously, his ribbons flowing and bouncing in time with the curls of his copper-colored perruke. He took his place in the center.

  Shoulder to shoulder, His Majesty’s team crossed the Place d’Armes at a dignified walk. The line split, the horses wheeling past each other, sixteen to one side, sixteen to the other, at the trot. His Majesty led the first line, the duke de Bourgogne led the second, mirroring the pattern of the first. The two lines split into four, the new lines led by Anjou and Berri on their spotted ponies in a double mirror image. At the canter, the four lines performed an intricate drill.

  From the four quarters of the Place d’Armes, the four lines of horses turned inward, leapt to the gallop, and ran headlong toward each other. In the center of the Place, the horses passed head-to-tail, close enough to touch, racing through a dangerous crosshatch at top speed.

  The four lines interlaced into two; the two lines faced each other. The riders bowed, Bourgogne to His Majesty, Berri to Anjou. Lucien’s counterpart was Berwick; they saluted stiffly. The two lines wheeled again, melded again, and came to a halt shoulder to shoulder facing the King.

  “Excellently done.” His Majesty accepted their salutes.

  Provoked as he was by the King’s questioning his candor, Lucien still found His Majesty’s presence moving.

  His Majesty wheeled his tall spotted horse and led his team from the field. The other riders jogged toward the stables, but His Majesty turned aside.

  “Attend me, M. de Chrétien,” he said.

  Lucien followed the King through the gardens and down the slope toward the Fountain of Apollo. He drew his dirk from his belt and used its point to sever the threads holding the ribbons to his coat wherever he could reach.

  Beneath the tent, the sea woman’s mournful singing filled the hot, humid air. Father de la Croix waited in his laboratory, paler and more ascetic than ever. Mlle de la Croix conversed in whispers of melody with the sea woman. Servants set down a carved wooden frame and settled the painted globe of the world within it.

  “Dismiss them, M. de Chrétien,” His Majesty said, “and fetch Mlle de la Croix.”

  Sherzad growled and muttered and submerged herself in the murk. Marie-Josèphe recognized Lucien’s footsteps on the planks behind her.

  He can no longer appear as if by magic, she said to herself. I always know when he’s near…

  “His Majesty will see you.”

  “Thank you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I am so grateful—”

  “No more gratitude,” Lucien said. “This concerns us both.”

  Marie-Josèphe gave Sherzad one last encouraging caress, rolled up the damp, crumpled sea chart, and followed Lucien to the laboratory. The wet hems of her gown and petticoats slapped her ankles. She had dressed carefully, in the grand habit that bared her shoulders, and revealed a decolletage she thought dangerously daring, though her gown was modest compared to what the princesses wore.

  The King raised her from her curtsy. He was alone with brother, sister, and Lucien. Marie-Josèphe faced him, looking him almost straight in the eye. She thought, with a shock: He isn’t so much taller than I. I thought him as tall as Lorraine—taller!—but it was an illusion of his high shoes and his wig, an effect of his power.

  “My relentless Mlle de la Croix,” His Majesty said. “Explain yourself.” Red and white ribbons, like those on the back of Lucien’s coat, covered his coat and breeches.

  Marie-Josèphe spread the chart on the laboratory table. Sherzad had puzzled over it, unable to comprehend the purpose of a drawing that was, in her view, horribly and dangerously inaccurate. What is the point, she had asked, when Marie-Josèphe finally succeeded in explaining it to her, of showing only the edge of the sea?

  The sea woman sang. The long underwater slop
es and sea-cliffs and treacherous rocks formed in Marie-Josèphe’s vision, a ghostly presence around her brother and Count Lucien and the King.

  “Here.” Marie-Josèphe traced a spot on the chart, pointing out a group of jagged rocks in a cove near Le Havre. “A galleon sank here. The rocks hold it, and its treasure spills out.”

  “Your Majesty’s flagship could reach the wreck in a few hours,” Lucien said.

  “M. de Chrétien,” His Majesty said, his impassive voice warming with a hint of humor and fondness, “you will not even sail on the Grand Canal. Who are you to give anyone advice about navigation?”

  “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty.”

  “However, you’re right. If the treasure exists. Has the creature played here—so close to shore?”

  “She knows it from a story her family tells.” Marie-Josèphe hesitated, then plunged ahead. “The sea folk like to tell stories of ships that almost reached land.”

  “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know, Your Majesty. Sherzad’s grand-aunts visited it.”

  “Two generations! The wreck could be dispersed, the treasure lost.”

  “It’s a small risk, a small investment, Your Majesty,” Lucien said. “The sea woman’s life gives you treasure. Her death gives you a morsel of meat.”

  “That morsel represents a feast as great as any of Charlemagne’s,” His Majesty said. “And the chance of immortality.”

  “Your Majesty, I beg you to believe me, it’s a myth,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Sherzad cannot give you immortality.”

  His Majesty turned to Yves. “You are silent, Father de la Croix.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Marie-Josèphe willed her brother to say what he must know, that Sherzad could not convey immortality upon anyone, even Louis le Grand or Pope Innocent.

  “I wish you to speak, Father de la Croix.”