The Moon and the Sun (3 page)

His Majesty’s court gathered, flanking His Majesty’s sedan chair. Marie-Josèphe found herself next to Madame, who squeezed her hand.

“Your brother’s safe, he’s well,” Madame whispered. “That is what’s important.”

“He’s safe, and well, Madame, and he was right,” Marie-Josèphe said, only loud enough for Madame to hear. “That is what’s important to my brother.”

Yves’ small group met the King at the border of the Persian rug. The sailors did not step on the rug; the sedan chair carriers did not leave it.

“Father de la Croix,” Count Lucien said.

“M. de Chrétien,” Yves replied.

They bowed. Yves’ pride and triumph shone behind his modest expression. His gaze passed across Louis’ court. Every courtier stood on this filthy dock, as if it were the Marble Courtyard, because of him. Marie-Josèphe smiled, taking pleasure in his position as the King’s natural philosopher and explorer. She expected him to smile back, to acknowledge, perhaps with surprise, her success in her brief time at Versailles.

But Yves scanned the court, and he did not even pause when he looked at her.

Madame pressed forward, drawing Marie-Josèphe with her, trying to get a clear view inside the basin.

The song rose again, a whisper surging into a cry, into a shriek of anger and despair. Marie-Josèphe shivered.

The shape in the basin shuddered violently. Water splashed Yves and the sailors.

The sailors flinched. The creature fought the canvas that swaddled it.

Count Lucien opened the sedan chair. His Majesty leaned out. His court saluted him with bow or curtsy. The men removed their hats. Marie-Josèphe curtsied. Her silken skirts rustled. Even the sailors tried to bow, laden as they were, and ignorant of etiquette. The creature shrieked again, and strands of its black-green hair whipped over the edge as the basin rocked and tilted.

“It lives,” Louis said.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Yves said.

Yves pulled aside a flap of dripping canvas. The creature thrashed, splashing Louis’ silk coat. Louis drew away, raising a pomander to his face. Yves covered the creature again.

His Majesty turned to the captain. “I am pleased.”

The King withdrew into the sedan chair. Count Lucien closed the door, and the carriers quickstepped away. Marie-Josèphe curtsied again. Louis’ court stood aside, bowing to their King as his palanquin passed.

Count Lucien handed a small, heavy leather sack to the galleon’s captain. The count nodded to Yves, then followed the King’s conveyance.

The captain opened the King’s purse, poured gold pieces into his hand, and laughed with delight and satisfaction. Count Lucien had presented him with a double handful of louis d’or, the gold coins commemorating the King. For a man of the captain’s station, it was a fortune.

“Thank you, Your Majesty!” the captain called after Louis’ sedan chair. “Thank you, royal jester!”

Members of the court gasped. The chevalier de Lorraine chuckled and bent to whisper to Monsieur. Monsieur hid behind his pomander and his lace to conceal his amusement.

Count Lucien made no response, though he must have heard the captain. His walking stick thudded solidly on the carpet as he climbed to the quay.

Yves grabbed the captain’s arm to silence him. “His excellency Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien!”

“No!” The captain laughed and shook his head. “Now
you’re
playing the jester, Father de la Croix.” He bowed. “A profitable voyage, sir. I’m at your service at any time

— even when you hunt sea monsters.”

He strolled off toward the galleon.

Madame nudged Marie-Josèphe. “Greet your brother.”

Marie-Josèphe curtsied gratefully, lifted her silk skirts above the shiny stinking fish scales, and ran toward Yves. Still he did not acknowledge her.

Marie-Josèphe’s stride faltered. Is he angry at me? she wondered. How could he be?

I’m not angry with him, and I have some right to anger.

“Yves...?”

Yves glanced at her. He raised his dark arched eyebrows. “Marie-Josèphe!”

His expression changed. One moment he was the serious, ascetic, grown-up Jesuit, the next her delighted older brother. He took three long strides toward her, he embraced her, he swung her around like a child. She hugged him and pressed her cheek against the black wool of his cassock.

“I hardly recognize you — I
didn’t
recognize you! You’re a grown woman!”

She had so many things to tell him that she said nothing, for fear her words would spill out all at once in a tangle. He set her down and looked at her. She smiled up at him.

Sun-lines creased his face when he smiled. His skin had darkened to an even deeper tan, while her complexion was fading to a fashionable paleness. His black hair lay in disarrayed curls — unlike most of the men at court, he wore no perruke — while pins and the hot iron had crafted Marie-Josèphe’s red-gold mane into ringlets beneath the lace-covered wire and the ruffles of her headdress, a fashionable fontanges.

His eyes were the same, a beautiful, intense dark blue.

“Dear brother, you look so well — the voyage must have agreed with you.”

“It was dreadful,” Yves said. “But I was too busy to be troubled.”

He put his arm around her and returned to the gold basin. The creature thrashed and cried.

“To the quay,” Yves said. The sailors hurried up the dock. Their bare tattooed arms strained at the weight of basin and water and Yves’ living prey. Marie-Josèphe tried to see inside the basin, but wet canvas covered everything. She leaned against Yves, her arm tight around his waist. She would have plenty of time to look at his creature.

They walked between the lines of courtiers. Everyone, even Madame and Monsieur and the princes and princesses of the Blood Royal, strained to see the monster Yves had captured for the King.

And then, as Yves passed, they saluted him.

Startled for a moment, Yves hesitated. Marie-Josèphe was about to dig her fingers into his ribs — Yves had always been ticklish — to give him a lively hint about his behavior. As a boy he had always paid more attention to his bird collection than to his manners.

To Marie-Josèphe’s surprise, and delight, Yves bowed to Monsieur, to Madame, with perfect courtliness and the restraint proper to his station.

Marie-Josèphe curtsied to Monsieur. She raised Madame’s hem to her lips and kissed it. The portly duchess smiled fondly at her, and nodded her approval.

Yves bowed to the members of the royal family. He passed between the double line of courtiers. Graciously, he nodded to their acclaim.

Halfway up the dock, between the dukes and duchesses, and the counts and countesses, Marie-Josèphe and Yves passed the second sedan chair. Its windows were closed tight, and the curtains drawn behind the glass. Poor Mme de Maintenon, whose only task was to follow the King from Versailles to Le Havre and back, showed no interest in the creature and its triumphant captor.

“I wish I’d been with you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I wish I’d seen the wild sea monsters!”

“We were cold and wet and miserable, and hurricanes nearly sank us. You’d have been blamed — on a warship, a woman is as welcome as a sea monster.”

“What foolish superstition.” Marie-Josèphe’s voyage from Martinique had been uncomfortable, yet exhilarating.

“You were much better off at the convent.”

Marie-Josèphe caught her breath. He knew nothing of the convent. How could he? If he had known, he would never have left her there in boredom and silence and lonely misery.

“I’ve missed you so,” she said. “I worried!”

“Whenever I thought of you, I heard your little tunes. In my mind. Do you still write them?”

“Versailles hardly has room for amateur musicians,” she said. “But you shall hear something of mine, soon.”

“I thought of you often, Marie-Josèphe... though not in such a dress.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s immodest.”

“It’s quite proper,” she said, leaving out her own first reaction to the tight waist and low neckline. She had known nothing of court then.

“It’s unsuited to your station. And to mine.”

“It’s unsuited for a colonial girl. But you’re now the King’s natural philosopher, and I’m Mademoiselle’s lady-in-waiting. I must wear grand habit.”

“And here I thought,” Yves said, “that you’d be safely teaching arithmetic.”

They climbed up the wharf to the quay.

“I couldn’t remain at Saint-Cyr,” Marie-Josèphe said. “All the instructresses must take the veil.”

Yves glanced at her, puzzled. “That would suit you.”

The King’s departure saved her from making a sharp retort; she, and Yves, and all the courtiers bowed as their sovereign climbed into his carriage. It drove away, surrounded by musketeers. The ragged townspeople streamed after the King, cheering, shouting, pleading.

Marie-Josèphe looked around hopefully for the chevalier de Lorraine, but he climbed into Monsieur’s carriage. The other courtiers hurried to their coaches and horses and clattered after the King.

Only Count Lucien, several musketeers, the pigeon-keeper, the baggage wagons, and a plain coach remained on the quiet quay.

The pigeon-keeper hurried to meet his apprentice, who toiled up the dock with the baggage-carriers. The apprentice balanced an awkward load of wicker cages, most of them empty. His master took the cages that still sheltered pigeons.

“Put the basin there,” Yves said to the sailors. He gestured to the first wagon. “Be gentle —”

“I want to see —” Marie-Josèphe said.

The last carriages rattled across the cobblestones.

Frightened by the clatter and the shouts and the snap of whips, the creature screamed and struggled. Its horrible singing cry cut off Marie-Josèphe’s words and spooked the draft horses so they nearly bolted.

“Be gentle!” Yves said again.

Marie-Josèphe leaned toward the basin, trying to see inside. “Now, behave!” she said. The creature shrieked.

The sailors dropped the basin. The carrying poles and the net fell across it. Water splashed the cobblestones. The sea monster groaned. The sailors ran toward the galleon, nearly knocking down the pigeon-keepers. The apprentice dropped the empty cages.

The master, who held live birds in his huge tender hands and let the pigeons perch on his shoulders and head, slipped his pets beneath his shirt for safety.

“Come back —” Yves called to the sailors. They ignored him. Their compatriots, carrying Yves’ other baggage, abandoned the crates and the luggage and the shrouded figure and fled to their ship.

Marie-Josèphe did her best not to laugh at Yves’ discomfiture. The wagon drivers had their hands full reining in the horses: they could not help. The musketeers
would
not, for fetching and carrying was far below their station. And of course Count Lucien could not be expected to help with the baggage.

Angry and stubborn, Yves tried to lift the basin. He barely raised its corner. Some ragged boys, stragglers from the crowd, rode the quay’s stone wall and jeered.

“You, boys!”

Count Lucien’s command stopped their laughter. They jumped to their feet, about to run, but he spoke to them in a friendly tone and threw each a coin.

“Here’s a sou. Come earn another. Help Father de la Croix load his wagons.”

The boys jumped from the wall and ran to Yves, ready to do his bidding. They were dirty and ragged and barefoot, fearless in the face of the creature’s moans. The boys might have worked for a bread crust. They lifted the creature into the first wagon, the baggage into the second, and loaded the shrouded figure into the wagon full of ice.

A specimen for dissection, Marie-Josèphe thought. My clever brother caught one sea monster for the King, and took another for himself.

“Yves, come ride with me,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“It’s impossible.” He climbed into the first wagon. “I can’t leave the creature.”

Disappointed, Marie-Josèphe crossed the quay to the plain coach. The footman opened the door. Count Lucien courteously reached up to her, to help her in. The strength of his hand surprised her. Instead of being short, as she had expected, his fingers were disproportionately long. He wore soft deerskin gloves. She wondered if he would permit her to draw his hands.

She wondered why he had stayed behind. She felt nervous about talking to him, for he was important and she was not. And, truth to tell, she wondered whether to stoop to his height or stand straight and look down at him. She resolved the question by climbing into the coach.

“Thank you, M. de Chrétien,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Mlle de la Croix.”

“Did you see the sea monster?”

“I am not much interested in grotesques, Mlle de la Croix. Pardon me, I cannot linger.”

The heat of embarrassment crept up Marie-Josèphe’s face. She had insulted Count Lucien without meaning to, and she suspected he had insulted her in return.

The count spoke a word to his grey Arabian. The horse bowed on one knee. Count Lucien clambered into the saddle. The horse lurched to its feet, clumsy for an instant.

Carrying its tail like a banner, the Arabian sprang into a gallop to take Count Lucien after his sovereign.

2

Sunset spread its light across the park of the chateau of Versailles. The moon, waxing gibbous, approached its zenith. Heading for their stables, the coach horses gained their second wind and plunged through the forest along the hard-packed dirt road.

Marie-Josèphe leaned her head against the side of the coach. She wished she had gone with Madame, in Monsieur’s crowded carriage. Madame would have all manner of amusing comments about today’s journey. Monsieur and Lorraine would engage in their friendly barbed banter. Chartres might ride beside the carriage and tell Marie-Josèphe about his latest experiment in chemistry, for she was surely the only woman and perhaps the only other person at court who understood what he was talking about. Certainly his wife neither understood nor cared. The Duchess de Chartres did exactly as she pleased. It had not pleased her to come from the Palais Royale in Paris to join His Majesty’s — her father’s — procession.

If Chartres spoke to Marie-Josèphe then the duke du Maine might, too. And then the King’s grandson Bourgogne and his little brothers would demand their share of paying attention to Marie-Josèphe.