The Moon and the Sun (39 page)

“I’ll use my newest strings,” said a third musician, looking ruefully at the broken string on his violin.

“Your broken string was the fault of that plump little princess,” said Michel.

“Under those silver petticoats, I’ll wager she’s bleeding like —”

M. Coupillet stamped his director’s baton on the floor. “Enough, Michel. You’ve blasphemed, insulted the King, and spoken lewdly, all in the space of a minute. And in front of M. Scarlatti’s little arithmetic teacher.”

“I beg your pardon, mamselle.” Michel the viola player bowed to her and turned his attention to a cup of wine and a slice of bread and cheese.

“What do you want, Mlle de la Croix?” M. Coupillet asked. “Why are you here? To beg relief from composing His Majesty’s cantata?”

“It’s finished,” she said. She could hardly listen to him, because she was listening to Domenico. When he played, the music sounded as she imagined it.

M. Coupillet waited. When she neither replied nor gave him the music, he thumped his baton on the floor again, startling her, snatching her attention back.

“You must give me the score,” he said.

“But Domenico is —” She stopped, amazed. The score lay on the seat beside Domenico; he played from memory.

Marie-Josèphe reluctantly gave M. Coupillet the pages. He weighed them in his hand; he riffled through them.

“What
is
this? An opera? Do you think you’re Mlle de la Guerre? You — an amateur, a woman! — you give me an opera to conduct? Worthless! Hopeless!” He tried to tear the sheaf in half, but it was too thick; his hand slipped and he ripped only the first half-dozen pages. He wrenched it with both hands, like a dog shaking a rat, and flung the whole thing down. The score spilled across the polished parquet.

“Sir!” She stooped to gather the torn, rumpled sheets.

“Incompetence! It’s dreadful.” He waved his baton toward Domenico. “You think to match yourself against genius such as Signor Alessandro Scarlatti!”

Domenico’s shoulders shook from laughter, but his hands never faltered, playing the piece M. Coupillet took for his father’s.

“Signor Scarlatti admired it!”

“What do you expect? He’s
Italian
— Signor Alessandro admires your white bosom, your —”

“You insult me on every level, sir!” She tried to leave, but M. Coupillet barred her way.

“His Majesty asked you for a song — a few minutes of music!” M. Coupillet said. “

You
insult me — you insult
him
— with this, this bloated abortion.” He emphasized his words by thumping his baton. “You charmed him with your coquettish ways, but your charm won’t distract him from your arrogant failure.”

“You’re unfair, sir.”

“Am I? I should have had this commission — He never would have noticed you if not for my embellishments —”

“Little Domenico’s embellishments, if you please, M. Coupillet. It’s contemptible enough for you to steal my accomplishments, but to steal a child’s —”

“A child? A child!” He shook his baton toward Domenico. “I have it on good authority, the boy’s a midget of thirty years!”

“I’m six!” Domenico shouted, and kept on playing.

Marie-Josèphe burst out laughing, but her sense of the absurd only infuriated M.

Coupillet the more.

“Do you dare to laugh at me? Am I insufficiently grand? I, who brought you to His Majesty’s attention?”

“Through no desire of your own, sir!”

“Desire? How dare you mention desire? You flirt with the Neapolitan, you flirt with the King, you even flirt with dwarves and sodomites, but you ignore and despise me

—”

“Good-bye, sir.”

Still he would not let her pass.

“Do you imagine I noticed you for your music? For your amateurish compositions and your fumble-fingered playing? I do not say you would not have been adequate —adequate, no more — if you’d devoted yourself to the art, but you’ve wasted whatever talent you ever had, and it’s just as well! Women play by rote! Women play as if they were still in the schoolroom! And as for the compositions of women — Women should be silent! Women are good for only one thing, and you’re such a fool you don’t even know what it is.”

A fleck of spittle, foaming, collected at the corner of his mouth. He loomed over her, shouting.

She clutched the untidy pile of paper. “Let me pass.” She meant her voice to freeze him, but her words revealed her vulnerability. Across the room, the young musicians stood in uncomfortable silence, their backs turned, as afraid as Marie-Josèphe of their master.

“Give me the score,” he said. “I’ll condescend to carve a song out of it, but you must show me some gratitude — and His Majesty must know the credit is mine.”

“No, sir. I won’t insult His Majesty with my inferior female music.”

Coupillet moved aside. His bow was a taunt, an insult.

“Do you wish to go? Yes, go! You’ll fail without my help. I’ll explain to His Majesty how you neglected his commission!”

oOo

Marie-Josèphe rode Zachi toward the Fountain of Apollo, holding tight to her drawing box and the score inside it. She dared not return to the musicians’ room. Perhaps she could find Domenico when he had finished his practice.

Do I have reason to find him? she wondered. He’s only a little boy, prodigy or not, how can he judge the music? Besides, M. Coupillet will surely forbid him to play it. I should have let M. Coupillet pick out a few measures, and then I wouldn’t be utterly humiliated in front of the King.

In truth, she could not bear the thought of letting M. Coupillet alter the sea woman’s music.

oOo

In the Fountain of Apollo, the sea woman sang and leaped for the entertainment of the visitors. Marie-Josèphe put aside all her own worries and humiliations. They were trivial compared to the sea woman’s peril.

She pushed through the crowd to the cage, where a bright flock of noblewomen sat watching the sea woman. Mme Lucifer smoked a small black cigar and whispered to Mlle d’Armagnac, whose hair was hidden beneath an iridescent headdress of peacock feathers.

When Mlle d’Armagnac saw Marie-Josèphe, she rose to her feet. All the other ladies followed her lead. Baffled, Marie-Josèphe curtsied to them.

She knelt at the edge of the fountain and sang the sea woman’s name. “Sea woman, will you tell these people of land a story?”

The sea woman swam to the foot of the stairs. She lifted her arms; Marie-Josèphe slipped her fingers into the sea woman’s webbed hands.

The sea woman snorted; the swellings on her face rippled. She drew Marie-Josèphe’s left hand toward her, forcing Marie-Josèphe to stoop. She prodded the bandage and nibbled at the knot that held it. The pressure increased the throbbing.

“Please, don’t.” Marie-Josèphe pulled her hand away. “You’re hurting me.”

A group of noblemen entered, laughing and pushing their way past the visitors.

Lorraine led half a dozen young men to the front of the audience. They bowed with exaggerated courtesy to the ladies and to His Majesty’s portrait; they threw themselves into their chairs, lounging and slouching and smoking. Marie-Josèphe turned away from Lorraine, away from Chartres.

“Please, sea woman,” Marie-Josèphe said. “A story?”

Madame arrived, with Lotte; Count Lucien accompanied them. Marie-Josèphe rose and curtsied. She smiled shyly, tentatively, at Count Lucien, hoping he would forgive her for her foolishness this morning. He nodded to her in a gentlemanly fashion.

Madame’s presence — or was it Count Lucien’s? — brought the men to proper behavior.

The sea woman began her tale in a melodious whisper.

“She will tell you a story,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“`The ocean cradled the sea people for a thousand hundred years. We lived in peace with the men of land.’”

Marie-Josèphe found herself in the midst of the story. The sea surrounded her, cool on her bare skin. She continued to speak, to sing, to tell the story, but her audience vanished and the people of the sea surrounded her. She swam, and sang; she caught fish and ate them raw; laughing, she played with sea-children among the spark-speckled tentacles of a giant octopus.

“`Then the men of land discovered good sport in pursuing us from their ships…’”

A strange sound raked the water. She and her family surfaced into the sunlight.

Curious and unafraid, ready to welcome the land people as they had greeted the Minoans, the sea people swam toward the dragon-prowed ship floating on the waves.

“`They sailed into our waters...’”

A great net soared over the sea people, fell among them, and captured one of her brothers and two of her sisters. Men of land leaned over the side of the ship, laughing and shouting. They landed the sea people, ignoring their cries.

“`They raided the sea people.’”

With sails and long oars, the Northmen set their ship in motion. The free sea people followed, horrified. The screams of their friends echoed through the wooden sides of the ship, filling the sea with pain.

“Ànd they tortured us.’”

The Northmen tied the sea man to their dragon prow. His screams warned them of rocks and reefs. Sometimes they aimed their figurehead toward the rocks, and laughed at his cries.

“`They used the sea women against their will, as no woman wishes to be used.’”

The Northmen threw the sea women overboard. They floated, limp, bruised, bleeding from secret places.

“The sea people —” Marie-Josèphe choked on tears. “Please, sea woman, please, no more.”

You must finish, the sea woman sang. You promised to finish the story.

Marie-Josèphe continued. The sea people comforted the injured sea women. But just out of the sight of the eyes, sleek and deadly shapes appeared. Hunting sharks surrounded the group, scenting the blood, moving in to attack.

The sea people turned outward to defend themselves, circling their injured friends and their children for protection. They sang a song of description and warning into the sea, so other families would hear it and beware the men of land and their marauding ships.

Yves stared at Marie-Josèphe, shocked. He had arrived, with Dr. Fagon, while the story surrounded her, filling her sight. Marie-Josèphe stammered out the end of the tale; she covered her face with her hands, hiding her tears. Her heart thrashed wildly, driven by horror on the sea woman’s behalf, fear and embarrassment on her own.

The visitors and most of the courtiers applauded, cheering as they would for the greatest drama of Racine.

“There, there, my dear,” Madame said softly. The Princess Palatine embraced Marie-Josèphe, holding her gently against her ample bosom, stroking her hair. Lotte joined them, patting Marie-Josèphe’s hand.

“What a tragic story! How imaginative you are!”

“Overwrought melodrama,” Lorraine said.

“You’re too harsh, sir,” Chartres said mildly.

“Come along, child,” Madame said. “We’ll ride with the King’s hunt. The fresh air will have you well in no time.”

“Fagon,” Lorraine said, “you should bleed her again.”

Marie-Josèphe started, ready to fly to Zachi, ready to run. Lorraine laughed, her first true enemy.

Count Lucien cleared his throat.

“Letting blood is not,” Fagon said nervously, “is not indicated, at this time.”

19

In the midst of a chaos of horses and dogs, carriages and shouting, Zachi stepped delicately across the paving stones of the courtyard. Marie-Josèphe stroked the mare’s sleek red-gold neck.

“Do you know my frailties, dear Zachi?” she whispered. I’m only tired, she thought, though her feverish despair resembled no exhaustion she had ever felt.

Zachi swiveled one fine ear, then pricked both ears forward and arched her neck.

Her walk was as smooth as still water.

Shouting, beating their leopard-spotted ponies’ sides with their heels, the young princes clattered across the paving stones. A half-grown hound bayed and scrabbled to chase them. Its leash, fastened to the collar of an experienced old bitch, strangled it back.

The bitch growled; the pup cowered. The King’s hunt assembled, fifty horses and riders, a dozen open caleches. The stallions snorted and reared; the courtiers preened as proudly.

Horse sweat, human sweat, dung, smoke, and perfume mingled with the scent of orange blossoms and the cool sharp air of September. The sky glowed blue.

Monsieur and the Chevalier de Lorraine rode out on matched black Spanish chargers. Monsieur’s diamond patches glittered against his powdered skin, his new coat gleamed with gold lace, and white plumes spilled nearly to the cantle of his saddle. He cocked his hat in the most stylish manner. Lorraine, impossibly elegant in his embroidered blue coat, sported a new diamond ring, displayed over his glove on his forefinger.

Marie-Josèphe hoped she could avoid him in the crowd.

“Unusual to see Monsieur riding astride,” the Duke du Maine said. His heavy hunter shouldered up beside Zachi.

“He has a beautiful seat, sir,” Marie-Josèphe said. “See how his horse responds to him.”

“He wishes he could put that bridle on Lorraine, and make him admire his seat.”

Maine chuckled.

Marie-Josèphe could make no sense of Maine’s comment, except the insulting tone.

“I have heard he led bravely,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Riding at the head of his company in battle.”

“Not until he’d spent two hours before his mirror. He must have taken four hours, to get himself up today.” Maine’s horse moved closer. Maine’s knee brushed against Marie-Josèphe’s leg. Zachi flattened her ears and nipped at the horse. Marie-Josèphe did not correct her.

“Monsieur has been kindness itself to me, sir,” she said. “And Madame, and Mademoiselle — I wouldn’t like to hear them spoken of with disrespect.”

Maine turned toward her. The motion straightened the unevenness of his shoulders.

The shadow of his wide plumed hat accentuated his intense beauty, the beauty of his father the King as a young man.

“Madame should have been born a man, and Monsieur a woman.”

Leaving Marie-Josèphe shocked to speechlessness by the poison in his voice, Maine stabbed his spurs into his horse’s flanks and galloped away.

“Mlle de la Croix!” Madame, in the shabby riding habit that she wore when her position did not require court dress, trotted toward her on a substantial chestnut horse.