The Moon and the Sun (11 page)

“Good morning, my dear,” Madame said. “We missed you at Mass.”

“Perhaps she was with M. de Chrétien instead,” Lotte said with a delighted laugh.

“Hush, daughter,” Madame said.

“Please forgive me, Madame,” Marie-Josèphe said, wondering what Lotte found so amusing.

“Forgive you for missing that wretched priest’s most boring sermon in weeks?

Child! I envy you.”

Madame’s complaints about the churchmen of Versailles always distressed Marie-Josèphe. She knew God would understand that Madame meant nothing blasphemous or heretical. Marie-Josèphe was not so sure the other members of court understood, especially Mme de Maintenon, especially since Madame used to be a Protestant. But, then, Mme de Maintenon used to be a Protestant, too.

“Do you like my hair? Your Odelette is a wonder!” Lotte said. “An octavon, is she?

Why have we not seen her before?”

“I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle, she’s a Turk — she recently followed me to France, from Martinique.”

“She dressed my hair so beautifully — and with a touch of her hand she renewed this old fontanges.”

“I cannot afford to buy you a new one every time the fashion changes,” Madame said dryly. “Nor even every day.”

Monsieur and Lorraine joined them. Marie-Josèphe curtsied, her heart beating faster when Lorraine took her hand between his, raised it to his lips, kissed it, and restrained her hand for a moment before letting her go. When she drew away, startled and shocked and excited by his provocative touch, he smiled, his eyes half-closed. He had the most beautiful long dark eyelashes.

Monsieur bowed coolly to Marie-Josèphe. He led his family and Lorraine away to their places. Monsieur took his seat, carefully arranging his coat-skirts. Chartres threw himself onto a chair beside his sister.

“Mlle de la Croix,” he asked, “is it true that the sea monsters eat people?”

“Oh, yes,” Marie-Josèphe said in as serious a tone as she could find. “I’m sure it is true.”

“And people,” Lorraine said, “return the favor.”

The fountain machinery creaked to life, clanking and groaning. In the distance, water gushed and flowed.

“Ah,” Madame said. “His Majesty is coming.”

In a panic, Marie-Josèphe thought, Where is Yves? If His Majesty is here, the dissection must proceed... unless His Majesty is furious, and has come to banish me —

Stop it, she said to herself. Who are you to think the King himself would punish you? At most he would send Count Lucien. More likely he would send a footman.

“Pardon me, please, Madame, Mademoiselle.” She curtsied quickly. Holding up the velvet skirts of her riding habit, she ran across the tent to the entrance.

A horrible possibility occurred to her. What if Yves expected her to remind him of the time of the dissection? What if she had failed him again, twice in a single day? She should have gone back to the chateau an hour ago. If she left now, His Majesty would be kept waiting, which was inconceivable. She could not begin the dissection herself — she was capable of performing it, but she would be horribly outside her place to do so.

She thought, I’ll ask one of the musketeers —

She nearly ran into Count Lucien. She stopped long enough to curtsy to him.

“Take your place, please, Mlle de la Croix,” he said. He glanced around the tent, his casual gaze taking in everything, approving everything, seeking any sights improper for His Majesty to see.

“But I — my brother —”

Musicians followed Count Lucien into the tent; he gestured to a spot that would make His Majesty the focus of their music. The musicians took their places. Their notes sought the proper tone, found it, combined into melody.

“Father de la Croix will arrive in good time,” Count Lucien said.

The musketeers again drew aside the curtains. The trumpeter played a fanfare that swept across the tent.

His Majesty entered, riding in a three-wheeled chair pushed by two deaf-mutes. A cushion supported His Majesty’s gouty foot. Yves strolled at the King’s right hand. Mme de Maintenon’s sedan chair followed close behind.

The fanfare ended; the musicians struck up a cheerful tune. Yves gestured and spoke and laughed, as if he were speaking to a fellow Jesuit of his own age and rank.

Count Lucien stood aside, bowing. Marie-Josèphe slipped out of His Majesty’s path and curtsied deeply. All the members of the royal family rose. Silk and satin rustled, sword-belts clanked, egret plumes whispered. Nobility and commoners alike bowed low to their King.

His Majesty accepted the accolades as his due. Footmen ran ahead to remove his armchair, making way for his wheeled cart. The carriers lowered Mme de Maintenon’s sedan chair beside him. Though the side curtains remained drawn, the chair’s window opened a handsbreadth.

“The ship came about so quickly,” Yves said, “that the sailor tumbled over the railing to the main deck — and when he landed, flat on his —” Yves hesitated, then said in the direction of Mme de Maintenon’s open window, “— I beg your pardon, Your Grace, I’ve been too long among rough sailors, I mean to say he landed in a seated position — he never spilled a drop of his wine ration.”

The King chuckled. No response emanated from Mme de Maintenon’s chair.

The King graciously indicated to the women of the royal family that they might be seated; he smiled at his brother and granted Monsieur a chair.

“I missed you, Father de la Croix, this morning.” His Majesty returned his attention to Yves. “I’m disappointed, if I don’t see my friends when I arise.”

A flush of embarrassment crept up Marie-Josèphe’s neck and across her cheeks. She took a step forward, involuntarily, determined to draw the blame to herself. Count Lucien reached up and laid his hand on her arm.

“I must tell His Majesty —” she whispered.

“Now is not a proper time to speak to His Majesty.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” Yves said. “I wished to prepare for the dissection, so it will go perfectly. I deprived myself of your awakening ceremony. It was inexcusable of me to overlook Your Majesty’s feelings in the matter.”

“Inexcusable, indeed,” His Majesty said, kindly, to Yves. “But I will excuse you, this one time. As long as I see you tomorrow when I wake.”

Yves bowed. The King smiled at him. Marie-Josèphe trembled with guilty relief.

Mme de Maintenon rapped sharply on the window of her sedan chair. The King leaned toward her, listened, and spoke to Yves again.

“And I expect to see you at Mass as well.”

“Your Majesty hardly need mention it.”

Yves bowed in deep gratitude to His Majesty.

Count Lucien spoke softly to Marie-Josèphe. “You must impress upon your brother the importance —”

Marie-Josèphe interrupted him. “He knows, sir. The fault is entirely mine.”

“The responsibility is his.”

“You missed Mass, too, Count Lucien,” Marie-Josèphe said, stung into a retort by the criticism of her brother. “Perhaps His Majesty will scold you as well.”

“He will not.” Count Lucien limped across the tent floor, to stand in his place beside the King.

All the while, the musicians played in the background. The sea monster trilled along with them, its song winding strangely within their melody.

“Marie-Josèphe!” Yves said. “I need you.”

She hurried between the rows of courtiers and joined him beside the dissection table.

“There you are,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“I am ready.” She kept her voice neutral, hurt by his peremptory tone, but accepting its justice. She hurried to stand at her drawing box. It held sheets of paper and her charcoals and pastels. The dry charcoal whispered against her fingers. At the convent, in Martinique, she had been forbidden to draw; at Saint-Cyr she had not had time for practice. She hoped she could do justice to Yves’ work.

“Remove the ice,” Yves said.

Two lackeys scooped away the ice and the insulating layer of sawdust from the dissection table, revealing the shroud. Others stood nearby with large mirrors, holding them so His Majesty could see the proceedings without craning his neck. The operating theater at the college of surgeons in Paris would have been more convenient for everyone else, perhaps, and would have allowed more spectators to see clearly. But at Versailles the convenience of His Majesty overruled other considerations.

At one end of the front row of spectators, Chartres watched eagerly, leaning forward, poised to leap and snatch and capture every shred of knowledge Yves offered.

He caught Marie-Josèphe’s gaze, wistfully, as if to say, I could have moved that ice. I could hold that mirror.

Marie-Josèphe tried not to giggle, thinking of the consternation if Chartres performed such menial tasks.

“His Majesty gave me the resources to discover the yearly gathering-place of the last of the sea monsters,” Yves said, “and to capture two of them alive. The male creature resisted to its death. The female sea monster survives, for it possesses no such will to freedom.”

The quartet split its melody and soared in harmony, a daring departure from the usual measured music. Marie-Josèphe shivered at the beauty and the daring. Madame

— who was herself an excellent musician — whispered a startled exclamation to Lotte; even His Majesty glanced toward the quartet. The violinist faltered. The musicians had not changed the familiar piece.

The female sea monster was singing.

It is like a bird, Marie-Josèphe thought, delighted. A mockingbird, that can imitate what it hears!

The violinist found his place. The sea monster’s voice soared above the melody, then dropped far below. The soft rumble touched Marie-Josèphe’s bones with a chill.

The tang of preserving fluid, and the dangerous sweet scent of flesh near rotting, rose from the canvas and filled the air. Monsieur raised his pomander, sniffed it, then leaned toward his brother and offered him the clove-studded orange. His Majesty accepted the protection from the evil humours, nodded thanks, and sniffed the pomander.

“I will first do a gross dissection, proceeding through the sea monster’s skin, fascia, and muscles.” As oblivious to the music as to the odors, Yves pulled the canvas aside.

The live sea monster’s song stopped.

The male sea monster was even uglier than the female, its face coarser, its hair pale green, tangled, and uneven. Its ugliness did not startle Marie-Josèphe; she had helped Yves dissect frogs, snakes, and wharf-rats, slimy worms, sharks with evil toothy grins.

But she was surprised by the creature’s halo: broken glass and shards of gilt metal radiated like a sunburst around its head. She sketched, as if her hand were connected directly to her eyes: the shape of the head, the tangled hair, the rays of broken glass alternating with kinked, gilded strips.

Yves swept away the glass and the metal, as if it were random debris. He picked up a lock of the creature’s hair. A twist of gilded metal fell from the tangle. Yves pushed it aside with the other rubbish.

Peering over the edge of the fountain and through the bars of its cage, the live sea monster whistled and sighed.

Marie-Josèphe slipped the sketch of the halo to the bottom of her stack of paper, and began another drawing.

“God has given the creatures hair,” Yves said, “so they may disguise themselves in beds of seaweed. They are shy and retiring. They eat small fish, but the bulk of their diet no doubt is kelp.”

Marie-Josèphe sketched quickly: the wild hair, uneven in places as if it had been cut; the strong jaw; the sharp canine teeth projecting over the lower lip.

“When you’re done with cutting the beast,” said Monseigneur, “we can roast bits of it.”

“My apologies, Monseigneur.” Yves bowed toward the Grand Dauphin. “That’s impossible. The carcass is preserved for dissection, not for eating.”

“No doubt pickling the thing does away with all the merits of sea monster flesh,”

Lorraine said.

“Save your appetite for my banquet, Monseigneur.” His Majesty spoke without amusement at the banter. Everyone fell silent and watched intently, even as he did, straining to see the creature or its mirror image.

Yves picked up a dissection knife and slit the dead sea monster’s skin from sternum to pubis.

The live sea monster screamed.

The musicians played louder, trying to drown out the shrieks. They failed.

“The sea monster’s skin is thick and leathery,” Yves said, raising his voice above the cries and the music. “It provides some protection against predators, such as sharks and whales and kraken. Your Majesty will have noticed that the skin of its tails is thickest —most heavily armored — proving that the beast’s defense is escape.”

The line of Marie-Josèphe’s charcoal wavered as the live sea monster’s shrieks rose.

Her vision blurred.

It can’t still be hungry, Marie-Josèphe thought. What’s wrong, sea monster? You sound so sad. I cannot come to you. I must stay in my place and document my brother’s work.

She finished the sketch of the face. The servant at her side took it away to pin it to the frame behind her, so all the court could see. She lifted her hand to stop him, but it was too late.

She had sketched the creature with open eyes: large dark eyes, almost no whites, large pupils. She had sketched it alive, with an expression of grief and fear.

Marie-Josèphe shivered, then threw off her disquiet.

What nonsense! she thought. Animals’ faces have no expressions. As for the eyes —

I drew the living sea monster’s eyes.

Yves peeled back the skin.

The female sea monster moaned and cried. Creatures from His Majesty’s menagerie answered, roaring and trumpeting, gibbering and snorting in the distance. His Majesty turned his head toward the Fountain of Apollo; the simple movement informed his court that the clamor distressed and annoyed him. The musicians played more loudly.

No one knew what to do, Marie-Josèphe least of all.

“We see a layer of subcutaneous fat — blubber, as it is known in whales and sea cows.” Yves projected his voice above the cacophony. “The sea monsters carry a relatively small amount of blubber, indicating that they do not dive to great depths or accomplish great sea journeys. We may be sure that they reach their midsummer gathering by riding the great warm current. My conjecture is that they conceal themselves in shallow water, and seldom venture far from their birth islands.”