“How charming, a picnic,” Mme Lucifer said in a derisive tone. “Tomorrow we’ll be spared the rabble—even the Gallery of Mirrors has its limits.”
“Let us look at your medal.” Mlle d’Armagnac and Mme Lucifer moved closer. Mlle d’Armagnac inspected the medal. The chain pulled at his neck.
Mme de Chartres was much shorter than he. If he looked at her at all, he could not help looking at her bare bosom. Her breasts pressed against his ribs, her hand tested the buttons of his cassock, her belly rubbed his sex. Yves and Mme Lucifer might as well be naked for everyone to see.
“Madame, pardon me—”
“Of course—if you stop struggling.”
“You know who I am—a priest—”
“What does that matter?”
“—and your brother!”
Mlle d’Armagnac handed the medal to Mme Lucifer. Both women laughed and pulled at the chain around his neck. “Father Yves, why torment yourself? No one else bothers! Your sister gives her favors to M. le Chevalier—”
“That isn’t true!”
“—and the notorious M. de Chrétien—”
“Do not insult my sister, madame!” Is it an insult, he thought wildly, to speak the truth? I should have saved her, I should have sent her back to the convent, I never should have allowed her to come to Versailles!
“—and even the King. You’re so scrupulous!” Holding his tether, she plunged her other hand beneath his cassock.
He tore away before she grasped him. The opening of his cassock trapped her, forcing her to stumble after him.
“You’re His Majesty’s natural son—”
“—so your sister must be his natural daughter!”
Mme Lucifer snatched her hand free. Mlle d’Armagnac burst into laughter. They followed him like Furies.
“You cannot deny it,” Mme Lucifer said. “Everyone knows the King puts on these fetes only for his mistresses.”
Stumbling around, trying to flee, Yves came face to face with Pope Innocent and all his cardinals. His Holiness’ stormy expression turned thunderous.
“Your Holiness, I—I—”
“Go to the chapel, my son,” Pope Innocent said. “Meditate on the subject of sin.”
“Father de la Croix!”
His Majesty strode toward Yves. His Carrousel teams followed him, a cavalry imagined from all the most exotic times and places of the world. The King, in costume, glittered with millions of livres’ worth of diamonds and rubies. The white plumes of his crest draped down his shoulders and back like a cloak. The first time he appeared as Augustus Caesar, he had been twenty-eight. He looked that young again.
His Majesty took Yves by the shoulders and embraced him, in the full view of all his cavalry, all his courtiers, all the visiting monarchs, all the Princes of the Church.
“Come stand at my right hand, my son.”
“To the chapel,” Innocent repeated. “Meditate—and consider particularly the sin of pride.”
Yves took one step toward His Majesty.
Yves saw, beyond the gate of the courtyard, Marie-Josèphe standing at the shoulder of a gray horse, looking up at the Count de Chrétien—She would hardly look up at him under any other circumstances! Yves thought, then thought of another situation in which she would—and touching his hand. Chrétien raised her hand to his lips. He let her go, prolonging the touch as a lover would. He rode into the darkness. Marie-Josèphe hurried away and disappeared.
“Father de la Croix!” Pope Innocent said.
“Come along,” His Majesty said. “Have some supper. I like a man with a hearty appetite.”
“I—forgive me, Your Majesty,” Yves said. “I must obey His Holiness.”
He fled from the courtyard.
Marie-Josèphe tried to slip into shadows. Footsteps followed her. It was impossible to hide behind an orange tree while wearing a grand habit. Her pursuer strode toward her, grim-faced.
Her brother grasped her shoulders, his eyes wild, his hair awry, his cassock ripped open. The sea monster medal hung heavy on his chest, tangled with his crucifix.
“Yves—?”
“This liaison will be your ruin!” he cried.
“This—liaison?”
“Has he bewitched you?”
“Who? What are you talking about? You don’t believe in witchcraft!”
“That scheming atheist—”
“Count Lucien has offered you nothing but wisdom! How can you speak so cruelly of him?”
“He’s a despoiler of women—”
“And he’s offered me only kindness! I admire him—”
“—and he’ll despoil you, if he hasn’t already!”
“—and I love him. If he’d take me, I’d have him!”
“You are like our mother—a wanton—”
“How dare you?” Marie-Josèphe exclaimed. “Our mother? Have you lost your mind?”
“Have you lost your virtue? Our mother did—the King had her, he got me upon her, and you—”
“Yves, you’re ridiculous.”
He stopped raving, hope in his eyes. If he were not so distraught, she would have laughed at him.
“Mama and Papa were in Martinique two years before I was born—did the King, unacknowledged, creep over the Atlantic to Fort de France?”
“But I was born in France.”
“Yes,” Marie-Josèphe said.
“The King acknowledged me.” Yves broke down crying. “He revealed my bastardy, before His Holiness, before everyone. And Mme Lucifer said you were Chrétien’s lover, and the King’s natural daughter, and…and…”
“What? Tell me.”
“And the King’s mistress.”
“Count Lucien treats me with complete respect. His Majesty has never offered me an improper word or gesture.” She embraced Yves with sudden sympathy. “Oh, Yves, dear brother, this explains so much, I’m so sorry for you.”
She tried not to laugh: So that’s why the ladies rose for me, she thought, and why Mlle d’Armagnac copied my peacock feather!
She smoothed Yves’ hair, comforting him. “When have I had time to be anyone’s mistress?”
At the bottom of the garden, Sherzad sang of loneliness and of despair.
“I must hurry,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Sherzad’s calling me. Go back, accept His Majesty’s accolades.”
The rumble of wagon wheels approached.
“I’ll go with you,” Yves said. “I’ll give Sherzad last rites—”
“She doesn’t want you!” Marie-Josèphe cried, desperate to make him go, to send him out of peril. “She isn’t a Christian, she doesn’t want—”
Count Lucien drove a baggage wagon past the Orangerie, incongruous in Roman armor, plumed hat, and white deerskin gloves.
“Count Lucien!” Marie-Josèphe ran after the wagon.
“Whoa!” The cart-horses stopped.
“Any news of the treasure ship?”
“Marie-Josèphe,” Lucien said patiently, “would I be driving this ugly wagon if I had good news?”
She scrambled up beside him, awkward in her elaborate skirts. Yves grabbed her arm.
“In the name of God, what are you doing?”
“Yves, go back to the King. Lucien, please, hurry.”
He chirruped. The cart horses lunged forward.
“I am so grateful to you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Somehow we must save Sherzad’s life—and His Majesty’s soul.”
“I’m an atheist,” Lucien said. “I have no business saving anyone’s soul.”
Marie-Josèphe laughed. She could not help it. “Lucien, I love you, I love you without limit or boundaries.”
Driving with one hand, Lucien slipped his fingers around hers.
The wagon shuddered. Startled and frightened, Marie-Josèphe turned. Half in, half out of the wagon bed, Yves clutched the sides and pulled himself in.
“Go back to the chateau!” Marie-Josèphe cried.
“If I do,” Yves said, “I’ll never atone for betrayin
g Sherzad.”
The full moon hung in the sky, a handsbreadth from its zenith. Marie-Josèphe sang to Sherzad, telling her, Swim to the far end of the Grand Canal, we must go far from M. Boursin, he must not see you climbing into the wagon.
Sherzad replied, her song full of hope and excitement. Propelling herself along the Grand Canal, she outpaced the galloping horses.
M. Boursin would appear at the east end of the Grand Canal one minute after midnight. He might wait a moment for Marie-Josèphe to appear, to bid the sea woman to surrender herself. At two minutes after midnight, he would sound the alarm to the guards. He would tell the King.
Marie-Josèphe looked back. The chateau glowed on its hilltop, brilliant with light.
A line of torches snaked along the path.
“Hurry,” Marie-Josèphe whispered.
Lucien wheeled the horses around the gravel track.
“Take the reins,” Lucien said. “Yves and I will—”
Sherzad clambered onto the bank at the western end of the Canal. Clumsy, agitated, she writhed toward the wagon. The cart-horses spooked and snorted and reared. The wagon lurched. Lucien rose, bracing himself, speaking softly to the powerful draft horses, bringing them to a nervous, sweating standstill.
“You must steady the horses,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I’ll calm Sherzad.” She climbed down and ran to the sea woman. “Be easy, sweet Sherzad, be still, we’ll help you.”
In a frenzy, Sherzad fought Marie-Josèphe and her brother, struggling toward the wagon as if she were still in her own element. Her claw grazed Marie-Josèphe from shoulder to breast. Sherzad slipped away, crashed to the ground, gasped, moaned. Marie-Josèphe knelt beside her.
“Sherzad, listen, listen to me.” She took Sherzad’s webbed hands. She sang, showing Sherzad what she hoped would happen. The horses stamped and snorted. Lucien soothed them with his voice and held them in check.
Sherzad sobbed and lay still. Marie-Josèphe and Yves lifted her into the wagon. So lithe and quick in the water, she was graceless on land. They sat on either side of her in the splintery wagon-bed, bracing her so she would not fall.
Lucien loosed the reins gradually, letting the horses walk, jog, canter, run, without jolting his passengers from the wagon. Terrified, the sea woman clutched Marie-Josèphe around the waist. She squirmed up beside her and kissed the deep bleeding scratch, humming regret.
“Never mind, Sherzad. Never mind.”
“And now?” Lucien shouted over the rumble of the wheels.
“The sea.”
“If we can reach it. Do you then have a plan for yourself?”
“I didn’t think beyond—I couldn’t…” She slipped her hand into her bodice and drew out a knotted handkerchief. “I have a few livres—as I didn’t have to bribe anyone to get a wagon. It will buy us bread—and fish.”
Lucien chuckled. He laughed. Marie-Josèphe opened her mouth to protest, then she began to laugh as well.
Rubies and diamonds covered Lucien’s armor. The fugitives were magnificently wealthy.
They were, as well, instantly identifiable and impossible to disguise.
The wagon rumbled through luminous darkness; the full moon gleamed on the mist.
“We might go to Brittany,” Lucien said.
“We might take passage on a ship. We could go home to Martinique.”
“I’ll take my chances with the King’s guard,” Lucien said, “before I’ll ever willingly get on another ship.”
Marie-Josèphe knew, Lucien must know, they had little more chance of hiring a ship than of escaping to Brittany.
Sherzad raised her head, her nostrils flaring; she slid from Marie-Josèphe’s arms and shrugged off Yves’ grasp and clambered up to lean on the jolting wagon seat. She gasped the wind in over her tongue, expelling the air in a hiss of satisfaction. The cart-horses plunged into a dead run.
“Easy, easy.” The horses breathed in rough snorts; Lucien slowed them. “We have a long way to go.”
The full moon sank past midnight. The harness rubbed the horses’ sweat to foam.
“Look,” Yves said.
Far behind, the road turned into a river of light, a rushing brilliant flood.
“The King,” Lucien said.
“We’ll never reach the sea,” Yves said.
“We had little chance of reaching the sea.”
“We’ve thrown our lives away on a hopeless task—?”
“Sherzad, the Seine will lead you home,” Marie-Josèphe said, “but you must swim as fast as you can, you must hide underwater whenever you hear men, or horses, or dogs.”
Sherzad understood. She sang a song of farewell to Marie-Josèphe; she laid her head against Marie-Josèphe’s shoulder and kissed the slash she had made across her breast. Marie-Josèphe’s blood smeared her cheek.
Lucien urged the laboring horses up a low rise. The lanterns and torches of their pursuers surged closer, penetrating the hollow with a spear of light.
“Lucien, can we hide? Leave the road, let them pass—?”
“Not enough cover. Too much moonlight.”
The wagon crested the rise. A curve of the Seine gleamed through luminous grey mist. Sherzad smelled the water. She sang, impatient and wild. The tiring horses fled her voice. The wagon bumped down the switchback slope.
“A few minutes,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Only a few minutes, and you’ll be free.”
The jeweled riders crested the hill. Their lanterns flung their shadows before them. They galloped across the land, fantastic, threatening. His Majesty’s Carrousel teams flowed down the slope, gathering speed, cutting the switchbacks, gaining fast.
The cart-horses plunged onto the flat, laboring into the mist of the river-plain. Marie-Josèphe fantasied that they could cross the bridge, block or burn it, leave the cavalry behind, and escape.
They’d only ford the river, Marie-Josèphe thought. And never mind the ruin of their costumes.
She held Sherzad. The wagon jolted over ruts, bouncing wildly, its wheels lifting from the ground as Lucien urged the exhausted horses to one last effort. They must only reach the bridge, where Sherzad could leap to freedom. Five hundred paces, and His Majesty’s troop still a thousand paces behind. Two hundred paces to the bridge. The torches sizzled, trailing sparks; the Carrousel headdresses waved in the air with the menace of demons.
Fifty paces. The wagon hit a rock. It jolted into the air. It crashed down. A wheel splintered. The wagon jerked sideways. Yves grabbed Marie-Josèphe and Sherzad, holding them in the wagon. The axle screamed along the road, digging a furrow through the rocks and ruts. Lucien drove the wagon onto the bridge, but where the road rose the axle caught; the wagon slewed and stuck, leaning lopsided between the stone ramparts.
“Whoa, whoa.” Lucien stopped the horses. One stumbled and fell to its knees. The other trembled, its head between its legs. The horses flinched at Sherzad’s cry of dismay, but they were too spent to try to escape her. His Majesty’s riders thundered toward them, five hundred paces away.
“If we surrender,” Yves said, “before we’re shot—”
“No! Help me! Sherzad—” Marie-Josèphe slid over the leaning corner of the wagon. Lucien clambered down. Sherzad writhed and fell onto the bridge, snarling.
Lucien ran to the road. His sword slid sharp from his cane. He waited.
The fantastical shadows of the Carrousel teams galloped toward him. The horses’ hooves beat the road to dust. Burning pitch and sweat and dirt hung pungent in the air. The King led; alone, magnificent, he stopped so close that Lucien’s sword touched his horse’s chest and the beast’s hot breath ruffled the plumes in Lucien’s hat. The teams drew up behind the King. The Nubian hunting chariot brought up the rear. The cheetahs flowed from it like a river, baring their teeth and snarling.
The sun blazed from the King’s shield.
“You fought bravely beside me, Lucien,” Louis said. “Will you now fight against me?”
Lucien could not reply. Marie-Josèphe and
Yves labored to help Sherzad to the crest of the bridge. The sea woman moaned with anticipation and snarled with defiance. Her tails scraped against stone.
Hurry, Lucien thought, please, hurry, I cannot make this choice.
With a shriek of triumph, Sherzad leaped from the bridge and plunged into the river.
“Swim for your life!” Marie-Josèphe cried. “Good-bye, dear Sherzad!”
His Majesty pointed downstream. Monsieur, his kimono sleeves flying like wings, galloped along the bank, his team close behind and the others following. His Majesty faced Lucien with only Lorraine and the young princes to attend him.
Lucien saluted His Majesty with his sword. He surrendered. Bourgogne and Anjou dismounted, took the sword and his cane, and presented them to their grandfather. Louis sheathed the sword.
“Will you give me your parole, M. de Chrétien?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Louis returned his sword. Lucien bowed, grateful to the King for treating him as an enemy, rather than as a traitor.
River-water closed around Sherzad. It was thick with the filth of animals and land-humans. She surfaced, spat with disgust, dove again, and set out swimming. She was bruised and sore, tiring quickly after her long imprisonment. The current helped, but she was far from the sea.
The sounds of the river changed. The silt was so thick she was nearly sound-blind. She surfaced for an instant; she kicked hard to raise herself above the mist. At the next bend, men and horses blocked the river. A long net stretched through the current. She dove again, hoping to find a way around it or beneath it. She slid past plunging hooves. When she touched the horses they screamed and thrashed and unseated their riders. The dangerous game gave her away. Riders jabbed with pikes and fired their muskets. Shot rushed past her, boiling the water with its heat; a ball snatched away a lock of her hair.
She dove. Stones weighted the net to the river bottom. Pushed into the net by the current, she fought to slip beneath the mesh. The hunters felt the strain. They pulled the net around her, tangling her, pushing her into shallows.
The Moon and the Sun Page 42
