Empire of Unreason (26 page)

“Yes, now and then,” Irena murmured, “to try and get back at him.

It was pointless, though.”

Adrienne nodded. “And if Hercule knew of it, he pretended he
didn’t. If he hadn’t, he might have been forced to a duel, or some
other unpleasant act. And so with you—you pretended to not know
what was going on, so as to avoid expressing the proper public
outrage, yes? But here on the ship, you weren’t going to be able to
keep such a pretense up without appearing unbelievably stupid.”

“Oh, I am already considered that, believe me. And you—” She
stuttered off into another moan as Adrienne tightened the bandage.

“Yes, damn you, people at court have affairs. It is the way of things

—I know that. But you made no effort to hide it! You were not even
passing discreet. The contempt you showed me! It was unbearable,
unthinkable. And now, he—
he
abandons everything and forces me
to leave our house, my friends, my life—all to follow you,
his
one
true love, to the ends of the earth. And he doesn’t have the good
grace to at least discard me! Better a pitied, wronged wife in Saint
Petersburg than…” Her sentence collapsed into hard breathing, as
she searched for the words to express exactly what she thought her
situation was.

“Then it is pride.”

“What if it is?” Irena snapped. “You think I’m entitled to no dignity,
no self-respect? What did I ever do to you that I don’t deserve that?

What about my children? What will they think of me when they are
old enough to understand?” She drew her leg away and pushed her
skirts down. “So what if it is my pride? But it is more than that, God
damn you. It is—it is because I
do
love him, I
do,
and everything
hadoes only proves that
he
loves
you.
And you love him. And I am
only a sort of—of impediment, a fixture in
your
love story. Hercule
is not my
husband,
for all that he managed to father two children.

He is
your
husband and my—my—breeding stallion. You make me
feel that
I
am the whore!”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Adrienne placed her hand on Irena’s cheek. She expected the other
woman to flinch, but she did not. “I do not love Hercule,” she
whispered. “If I did, I would have married him when he asked. I do
not love him, not as husband. He is my companion, my brother in
arms. He is very dear to me—but I do not love him.” It was like an
incantation, saying it, but one that had the opposite effect. She
suddenly knew she loved Hercule after all.

“But you—”

Adrienne paused, almost ready to repent her last statement. But
she had begun this, hadn’t she? She would finish it. “My body is
used to him,” she said. “It knows him. And I did not want to hurt
him.”

“That’s it? Your body is
used to
him? This makes no sense! For that
you have made my life miserable these last seven years?”

“I did not think of you, Irena, not much. You never brought it to my
attention. You never complained. I suppose I honestly thought you
did not care.” She considered her own words for a moment. “No,
that is a lie. I knew you cared, but I suppose I convinced myself that
you did not care very much and that… Irena, do not mistake me for
a good woman.”

Irena looked down at her bandaged leg. “I would not. I do not.”

“But I will not bed him again. If you had asked me not to seven
years ago, I would have complied even then. It did not require a
gun.”

“I should not have had to ask. I should not have had to beg you like
this.”

Now Adrienne laughed. “You consider this
begging?
What a fierce
woman you are. How did you hide it so well?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“If you were a normal woman, you would know that hiding is what
we do.”

Adrienne felt a sudden anger for the first time in the entire
confrontation. “Irena, I was raised in the school of Saint Cyr, where
we were punished for whispering—for the mere suspicion that we
might be telling secrets. It only made us better at them. I went to
the French court. I ate lies and drank them; I wore them. I hid
every single true thing about myself, because the truest things
about me were unseemly in a woman. Because of this, I lost
everything I hold dear. I lost my virginity to a mad, ancient,
disgusting king. I lost my true love, my—” She shut her mouth, took
a deep breath to try and calm herself, and started again. “I’m sorry,
Irena, sorry for your sake. I apologize for my long affair with
Hercule. I do not apologize for not bothering to hide it. I no longer
hide who I am. I will not. Do you understand me?”

Irena struggled to stand. “Yes. I think I do.”

“Sit on my bed. You aren’t able to walk yet—”

“lam.”

“You aren’t.” She watched as the other shakily sat on the bed.

Adrienne went back to her cabinet and produced some brandy.

“Take some of this,” she said. Irena did so, downing the first glass
quickly, and the second, too.

Adrienne decided to have some herself. The two of them sat there
in silence for a few moments.

“We have had an awkward moment here, you and I,” Adrienne said
after a few moments. “I hope—I hope we can put it behind us.”

“You are truly done with Hercule?”

“Yes.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

Irena nodded. “Good. It will not make him love me more, I know.

But it will make me hate you less. I think—I think I should
like
to
hate you less.”

Adrienne poured them each another drink. “Here’s to hating less,”

she said, and they drank together.

She answered the rap on her door, still wiping the sleep grit from
her eyes, and found Crecy there, smiling cheerily.

“Well, at least you’re decent this morning,” Adrienne noticed.

Crecy frowned. “I haven’t said anything nasty about you— why do
you feel the need to insult
me?”

“Just from habit.”

“Ah. Well, better to have a habit than to wear one, I suppose. And
speaking of habits, Madame d’Argenson seems to have developed a
new one. A limp…”

“Yes. She tried to kill me and wounded herself instead. What of it?”

Crecy raised one eyebrow. “There is curiosity about it.”

“In all quarters, or just in the redheaded one?”

“You can start by satisfying my curiosity, thank you.”

“It’s simple—no baroque intriguing here. She was finally tired of
being made a fool of.”

“And you have resolved all this?”

“I think so. She does not call me sister, but I do not think she will
try to perforate me again.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“No, perhaps she has learned her lesson. She will use poison next
time.”

“Nonsense.”

“I’m serious. Having worked up the nerve once—and having
received no punishment—she will find her courage twice as easily
next time.”

“Veronique, there is no need. My liaison with Hercule is ended.”

“She is in the habit of believing you sleep with him. She will
continue in that habit.”

“I’m the one who spoke with her. I believe otherwise.” She
beckoned Crecy into the room and began pushing through the
gowns in the small chest. “Besides, what would you have me do?

Throw her overboard?”

“Nothing so drastic. Move her and Hercule to one of the other
ships.”

“I would rather not. I would rather keep him here, that I might
protect him.”

“He is more than grown. If you are going to relinquish your hold on
him—”

“As lover, not as cherished friend!”

Crecy rolled her eyes. “And now we are back to the reasons that
Irena will never believe you and he have given up your afternoon
wine and cheese.”

“Which gown, Veronique?”

“The blue one. Are you listening to me?”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“About the dress? Yes. As to the rest—thank you for the advice. I
love you dearly and this particular conversation is over.”

“Very well.” Crecy shrugged. “You are a grown-up, too. You’ve your
tutorial with Elizavet now?”

“Yes, and then the coffee with the students. Anything exciting
happening today?”

“No attacks or intimations of them. Actually, Hercule wants to land
at least one of the ships this afternoon.”

“For what reason?”

“We left light on provisions. They hope to acquire more.”

“We have the manna machines—”

“Yes, but no one wants to eat that stuff. I certainly don’t.”

“I’m wary of towns. Golitsyn could easily arrange a trap.”

“The idea was to find a herd of something or other and kill some, or
find some Tartar tribesmen who will trade a goat or two.”

“Oh. Well, that’s entirely different. Tell them to go ahead, if they
wish. In fact—Where are we, anyway?”

“We’ve crossed the Urals.”

“Perhaps—if it’s safe—we can even arrange a collecting expedition
for the students.”

“Collecting?”

“Yes. Plants, rocks, that sort of thing. Natural history.”

“How exciting. It’s too bad I’ll be doing the boring work of hunting
EMPIRE OF UNREASON

and fighting off the wild Tartars.”

“Philistine. Help me put this on.”

“You didn’t bring a maid? Or am I that, too?”

“You haven’t been a maid in twenty years, nor would anyone
mistake you for one, you old jade.”

Crecy made a point of pulling the corset laces a bit too tight.

* * *

Lomonosov stood, an expression of mixed apprehension and
excitement on his young face. The others looked on respectfully,
sipping their chocolate.

“These ideas of mine are not fully formed,” he began, “but I believe
they will provoke some thought. I would hesitate to offer them in a
formal discussion as something proven, as a fait accompli—”

“Informal is the nature of these meetings,” Adrienne remarked.

“Imagine this a coffeehouse—such as philosophers once frequented
in London or Paris—rather than liken it to a lecture hall in a
college. We are here to promote open and free discussion and
debate amongst friends.”

Lomonosov smiled gratefully and nodded. “Let me begin with what
we all accept, I think, with three propositions we find in the works
of Newton. The first proposition is that matter is composed of
various proportions and arrangements of four sorts of atoms—

damnatum, lux, phlegm, and gas. The second proposition is that
these atoms are given shape by ferments, the arrangements of
immaterial forces—attractions, repulsions, and harmonies that
conspire to collect the appropriate atoms to form a given matter.

The first cause of these ferments is considered to be God, who, at
the moment of creation, made a finite number of ferments and
placed them into the world. The third proposition is that the forces
EMPIRE OF UNREASON

of affinity and harmony upon which existence is predicated are of
two sorts: limited and absolute. Now, to be provocative, I would
like to say from the outset that I consider each of these
propositions to be flawed in some way.”

“Are you saying Newton was wrong—that in effect all modern
science is wrong?” Linne asked.

“Let us take care,” Adrienne cautioned, “not to make of Newton a
new Aristotle. Science stagnated for hundreds of years because the
assertions of Aristotle were not considered questionable. For
science, everything is questionable.”

Lomonosov nodded in relief at her agreement. “Thank you,
Mademoiselle. To be more clear, let me explain that I do not say
that Newton was wrong so much as incomplete. Let me begin with
the last proposition first, if I may—the difference between limited
and absolute affinities.

“Magnetism and gravity are perfect examples of imperfect
affinities, the former more limited than the latter. Magnetism is an
affinity only between like substances—certain metals— and its
effect diminishes with distance in proportion to the square of the
distance from the source. Gravity is more general and catholic—

affecting all matter equally—and yet still obeys the inverse-square
law. The perfect, or absolute, affinities we know best are the
harmonies. The harmony that connects two aetherschreibers, for
instance, is said to not diminish with distance and, as well,
propagates instantaneously.”

“Doesn’t gravity propagate instantaneously?” Breteuil asked.

“I question it,” Lomonosov said. “By an experiment I have shown
magnetism does not—it travels at the same speed as light—and that
to me suggests that gravity behaves in a like manner, because they
are similar affinities—both imperfect.”