The Moon and the Sun (25 page)

“It is a gift,” Mme de Maintenon said softly. She smoothed the white silk. She held it up for him to see.

People in torment writhed across satin. A man screamed from the rack; blood flowed from a woman’s entrails as an Inquisitor drew her bowels from her body. The central figure, a wild-eyed man in Medieval garb, twisted against the stake, flesh burning in the splash of scarlet silken flames.

Lucien inspected it without reacting. “Free-thinkers, libertines, and dangerous heretics all.”

“My girls at Saint-Cyr embroidered it.”

“Strong images, madame, to inflict upon schoolgirls.”

“Exactly — strong, and instructive. While they worked, they considered heresy, and disobedience, and its consequences. I must finish it quickly.” She bent to the embroidery again, placing another scarlet stitch of fire. “I usually do the eyes last. For this image I did them first.” She plunged the needle into the cloth. “This is Éon de l’Étoile.

Arch-heretic, the Leader of Satan’s Army.”

“He was never burned,” Lucien said.

“Indeed, surely, he must have been. He made war upon the Church, he plundered monasteries, he called himself God’s son —”

“He fed the peasants with the riches of the Church.”

“Riches he obtained by thievery and murder.”

“The Church imprisoned him, and he died,” Lucien said. L’Étoile had, of course, been a madman. “His followers never denounced him. They were burned — but he was not.”

“I resign the field in favor of your intimate knowledge of a pagan land.” Mme de Maintenon fixed another flame at l’Étoile’s feet. “No matter. He should have been burned.”

“His Majesty the King!”

The guard threw open both doors for Louis. His Majesty hobbled in, favoring his gouty foot.

Lucien bowed to His Majesty; he acknowledged the greeting of Father de la Chaise and the profound salute of the marquis de Barbezieux. Louvois’ vindictive and brutal son succeeded his father as the King’s military adviser. Only once had he taken liberties when speaking to Lucien. In the face of the King’s sudden indifference to his interests, he proved he was not entirely stupid: he begged the Count de Chrétien for forgiveness

— and intercession.

Father de la Chaise always behaved with perfect courtesy to Lucien, hoping, futilely, to convert him and save his soul.

M. de Barbezieux carried his tooled leather campaign desk, while Father de la Chaise carried the Pope’s gift, the reliquary, with great reverence.

Mme de Maintenon gasped. “Sire, the saint’s relic, it should be in the chapel, under guard —”

“Don’t you want to look at it, Bignette?” His Majesty asked. “Once Father de la Chaise takes it away, we will never see it except on the saint’s day.”

She made as if to rise from her chair, then sank back within its protection. Father de la Chaise brought the reliquary to her. She whispered a prayer.

“It is beautiful.” She bit off the last strand of flame-colored silk, and held out the tapestry to Father de la Chaise. “Father de la Chaise, my girls made this — you must take it, so it may lie beneath His Holiness’ precious gift.”

“That will be glorious, madame.”

Louis invited his advisers to sit at the council table. Father de la Chaise placed the domed cylinder before His Majesty. Louis idly caressed its chased gold sides and the pearls on its top.

“A rare gift from His Holiness,” Barbezieux said.

Lucien snorted with disgust. “The saint had no use for the relic... and His Majesty has no need of it. Or its cage.” He wondered what lunatic had first dismembered a body and enclosed it, bit by bit, in magic amulets.

Louis chuckled, then chided Lucien gently. “None of your atheistic wit, Chrétien.

Innocent has made peace with me. I shall assume he means no insult with his cage.”

His Majesty called for Quentin, his personal valet, who tasted the wine, poured for Barbezieux and de la Chaise, then for Lucien, and finally, when His Majesty’s guests had also tasted the wine without being poisoned, for the King.

Barbezieux toyed with his goblet.

“Your health, Your Majesty.” Lucien drank, appalled by the young minister’s rudeness, amused by his discomfiture. He believes the slander, Lucien thought, that Mme de Maintenon poisoned his father. He fears the same.

His Majesty accepted the wishes for his health, then drank from his own goblet and settled into work.

“Chrétien,” the King said, “Brittany lacks a bishop. Were I to nominate one, His Holiness will invest him with the others, as soon as he signs the treaty. To whom do you wish the appointment offered?”

“To Nemo, Sire.”

His Majesty raised a questioning eyebrow. “To no one?”

“If M. de Chrétien has no nominee, Your Majesty, the position and the revenue might best be given to —”

Lucien interrupted Father de la Chaise. “It suits my family for the appointment to remain empty.” He finished his wine; Quentin poured again.

“Sir, you’re trading the spiritual health of Brittany for a few bits of gold,” de la Chaise said. “Your people need direction. Your family is sufficiently wealthy, and Brittany already bears the reputation —”

“Enough, sir. I asked for M. de Chrétien’s suggestion, and he has given it. About my decision, I will see.”

A new bishop would send much of the revenue from his lands to Rome. Without a bishop’s household and responsibilities to support, the parishioners would pay their taxes to His Majesty, and be left with something to eat after what threatened to be a poor harvest.

You’re too proud for your own good, Lucien said to himself. You neglect to explain yourself to His Majesty because you think Mme de Maintenon will give herself credit for your decision, because she might believe she shamed you into unaccustomed acts of charity.

Explaining himself to His Majesty was unnecessary. Lucien’s sovereign possessed great political astuteness; His Majesty often understood the motives of his subjects and his advisers before they understood themselves.

“What have you for me today, M. de Barbezieux?”

“Orders, Your Majesty, for quartering troops among the Protestants.” Barbezieux drew papers from his campaign desk.

“Very good.” Louis signed the documents. Barbezieux and de la Chaise looked on with approval. Already busy with another bit of needlework, Mme de Maintenon smiled.

Lucien said nothing, for nothing he could say would make Louis change his mind.

He had already tried, harder than was prudent. The proposal was meant to hasten the conversion of the heretics, but as far as Lucien had seen, it had caused only disaster and treason and the enrichment of men who did not deserve any rewards. Yet instead of withdrawing the failed orders, the King extended them. His Majesty’s intolerance —

Mme de Maintenon’s, as Lucien preferred to believe — prevented him from seeing how severely the draconian measures against Protestants damaged France and His Majesty himself.

It’s easier to be an atheist, Lucien thought. And less dangerous. The King’s troops do not have permission to quarter themselves in my house, to loot it, to abuse without limit the members of my household.

“Is that all? Good day, then, gentlemen,” the King said to Barbezieux and de la Chaise. “M. de Chrétien, you will stay for a glass of wine.”

Barbezieux and de la Chaise bowed and withdrew.

Quentin refilled His Majesty’s goblet, and Lucien’s. Mme de Maintenon refused refreshment. Lucien sipped the wine; it was too fine a vintage to gulp even for medicinal purposes.

His Majesty closed his eyes, revealing for a moment his exhaustion, his age.

“Give me some simple task, M. de Chrétien,” His Majesty said. “Nothing to do with statecraft or religion. Something I may grant with a purse, with a wave of my hand.”

“There’s the matter of Father de la Croix, Your Majesty. The dissection.”

“Did he not complete it?”

“He completed the important part, Your Majesty. Apparently some few small muscles and sinews remain for him to observe.”

“His first attention must be to the matter we investigated last night.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

His Majesty waved his hand. “Otherwise, as his time permits, he may do as he likes with the carcass.”

“I will tell him, Your Majesty. He’ll be grateful.”

They sipped their wine in companionable silence, as if they were campaigning or at Marly, where etiquette weighed less heavily.

“You trouble me, M. de Chrétien,” His Majesty said.

“Trouble you, Sire!”

“You ask me for nothing.”

“No wonder I trouble you, Sire,” Lucien said. “Nothing is difficult to give, being so insubstantial.”

His Majesty chuckled, but would not be diverted. “All around me people beg for rank, for position, for pensions. For themselves, for worthless family members.”

Lucien wondered if he were being used to convey a message to Mme de Maintenon, who had obtained endless perquisites for her feckless brother. It was equally likely —more likely — that His Majesty spoke without considering her feelings.

“I’m afraid, M. de Chrétien, that if you are dissatisfied, you’ll flee my court again to the adventures of Arabia.”

“I have no reason to return to Arabia, Your Majesty,” Lucien said. “I went there only because you commanded me to leave your sight.”

“I often wished for your good counsel, while you were gone. Will you not take some reward, if only a token?”

You have given me a place in your confidence, Lucien thought, which honors me beyond wealth or rank.

“Your Majesty, I ask for nothing more than I already have.”

“Someday, Chrétien, you’ll ask me for a great favor. My honor will require me to grant it, whatever the cost.”

oOo

Marie-Josèphe closed up the cage and crossed the plank floor to Yves’ laboratory. The guards had moved the screens, surrounding it, hiding the shroud and protecting the equipment and the samples. She slipped past the curtains. Inside, everything was just as Yves had left it. Marie-Josèphe breathed a sigh of relief. His Majesty had not bothered to tell her brother that the sea monster would be put on display — for, after all, why should he? It was his sea monster. And he had, no doubt, been certain that his guards would protect the laboratory from casual curiosity or inadvertent damage.

The shroud was piled with fresh ice and a layer of sawdust. A hint of decay tinged the air. If His Majesty would only give Yves a single session, he could complete the gross dissection and preserve samples for study.

She sat at the laboratory table. The sea monster’s internal organs, including the anomalous lobe of the creature’s lung, lay preserved in spirits in heavy glass jars. The tissue looked quite ordinary, no different from that of the porpoise she had helped Yves dissect when they found it stranded and dead on the beach back home.

Shouldn’t an organ of immortality shine with light and glow with gold?

Marie-Josèphe wondered. If the precepts of alchemy are true, after all, if base metals may transmute to the perfect metal gold, if living beings may achieve immortality...

She had never believed in transmutation or immortality. The discipline of observation and description and deduction and interaction spoke to her more clearly.

She prepared samples of kidney and liver, pancreas and lung, mounted them, and made a careful drawing of each, studying them with Yves’ old microscope. The sea voyage had done the mechanism no good. She hoped Mynheer van Leeuwenhoek would condescend to sell her one of his instruments. His lenses were said to be the best in the world, though devilishly difficult to focus.

She opened the final jar and carefully prepared a sample of the anomalous lung. Its texture was firmer than ordinary lung, its tissue denser.

At the microscopic level, the anomalous tissue differed greatly from ordinary lung.

Instead of air sacs, the tissue lay in delicate overlapping leaves. She picked up her pen and began to draw.

“Mlle de la Croix.”

She lifted her gaze from the microscope. Count Lucien stood within the makeshift room of white silk, aloof and elegant as always. They exchanged salutes; he not only bowed, but tipped his hat.

“I see you are a scholar,” he said.

“I cannot claim such a distinction. I’m only preparing samples for Yves to study.”

“Where is your brother? I have a message for him.”

“I’m sure he’s writing up his notes —”

She cut off her careless words even before he raised his hand to silence her about last night’s secret meeting.

“— about the other matter,” she said. “Has His Majesty set the time of the next dissection? Please, tell me.”

“His Majesty desires your brother to concentrate his efforts upon... the other matter.

But inasmuch as his time allows, M. de la Croix may conduct the dissection when His Majesty is not present.”

“Thank you, Count Lucien.”

“I’ll convey your gratitude to His Majesty.”

“You see? — I didn’t ask too much of you, after all.”

“I’d gladly take credit if I deserved it. The decision rested completely with His Majesty. But, Mlle de la Croix, have I asked too much of you?”

“In what way?”

“The submission for His Majesty’s medal.”

“It’s nearly finished.” I’m not lying, she thought, hiding her dismay. Not exactly lying. The dissection sketches have prepared me to draw a proper likeness of the living sea monster.

“When may I have it?”

“Tomorrow. I promise.”

“Very well.”

“Sir, may I beg a favor of you? A word of advice? It will take a moment of your time, no more.”

“Certainly.”

“Before I entered the convent —” She stopped, and waved her words away; Count Lucien had no time to spare for her history. “I would like to resume a correspondence...”

She hesitated, afraid he might laugh at her presumption.

“With an admirer?” He smiled, in a kindly fashion. “Secret letters?”

“Certainly not, sir! It would be improper — my brother wouldn’t approve. I corresponded about optics, and the laws of motion, and asked a few ignorant questions about the nature of gravity. I only want to know who to give the letter to, so M. Newton will receive it.”

“M. Newton,” he said.