The Moon and the Sun (44 page)

In the fountain, the sea woman fingered the tangled light-green hair knotted to her darker hair.

“He gave me a token, a pretty thing, a shiny stone, to tie into my hair. I would return it to him.”

The sea woman’s song faded; the image of her friend’s body disappeared, falling through darkness and beyond the pinpoint lights and glowing ribbons. The images disappeared entirely. Marie-Josèphe bent her head and wiped her tears on her sleeve.

The true world returned to her sight.

Her heart sank, for His Majesty frowned and His Holiness glared and Yves looked ready to faint, while the nobles whispered to each other, appalled. But the audience of commoners sighed and wept with pity. Count Lucien, behind His Majesty, stared at the floor. The curls of his perruke hid his face.

“That is all,” Marie-Josèphe whispered.

“Pagan ritual,” His Holiness said. “Did you learn these things from wild men, Mlle de la Croix?”

His Majesty rose. “Doesn’t the sea monster wish to keep this love token?”

Lorraine laughed at His Majesty’s witticism, enjoying Marie-Josèphe’s anguish.

Monsieur chuckled briefly, but with more distress than amusement.

The sea woman sang a melody of heartbreaking beauty, a distillation of love and grief.

“I would send it with him,” Marie-Josèphe sang, following the melody. “Send it into the depths with him, to acknowledge that I, too, will die.”

“Does she not,” His Majesty said carefully, “claim to be immortal?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

“We are all immortal in the love of God,” His Holiness said. “Does your sea monster believe in the Resurrection? In God’s everlasting life?”

“Life itself is everlasting,” Marie-Josèphe sang, in harmony. “People live, people create new life, people die. People never come back.”

His Holiness made a sound of utter disgust. “Your games have passed beyond amusement, Mlle de la Croix — even beyond pagan belief. You tread the edge of heresy!”

“I didn’t invent the story, Your Holiness,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Please, please believe me. The sea woman told it. She doesn’t understand heresy —”

“You should,” Innocent said.

“But she could understand God!” Marie-Josèphe exclaimed. “She could, if Your Holiness taught her. You could give Our Savior to the people of the sea —”

“Be silent!” His Holiness said. “Convert beasts?”

“She thinks Jesus on the Mount should have preached to loaves and fishes instead of to people.”

No one laughed at Lorraine’s observation; Count Lucien gave him a glare of perfect animosity.

“Where’s the token?” Louis ignored both Lorraine and Count Lucien. “The token she wishes to give to her mate?”

The sea woman snarled. Marie-Josèphe winced, shocked by the reply: shocked, but not surprised. She hesitated, hoping in vain that she would not have to lie.

“Your Majesty, someone took it.”

“Who?”

“One — one of the sailors.”

The sea woman protested, thrashing her tails, splashing Marie-Josèphe’s back with cold fetid water.

“Your Majesty, isn’t this proof that she talks to me? I have no other way of knowing about her token.”

“Dear foolish child,” Louis said, “I have no way of knowing the token ever existed.”

He gazed at her sadly. His next words, she knew, would be a death sentence.

“Don’t kill it,” a visitor whispered from the back of the tent. Other commoners took up the refrain: Don’t kill it, don’t kill it. His Majesty’s brow clouded. Marie-Josèphe wanted to cry to the visitors, Don’t you know, His Majesty cannot be cajoled or threatened? With all goodwill, the spectators only made things worse. A musketeer strode toward the disturbance; the whispers stopped.

“You’re most clever,” His Majesty said to Marie-Josèphe, “trying to save your pet by making it into Scheherazade.”

His Majesty’s courtiers laughed, all but Count Lucien.

“One Thousand and One Ocean Nights, by Scheherazade the Sea Monster!”

Chartres cried.

The sea woman clambered past Marie-Josèphe, dragging herself to the top of the stairs. She glared at the King.

“Shhhhrrrzzzzaaddddd,” she snarled.

“The clever Mlle de la Croix has taught it to talk!” Lorraine exclaimed. “Though not as well as a parrot.”

Monsieur laughed. “Sherzad the parrot!”

“The myth requires —” His Majesty said.

The laughter ended.

“— that I allow it to live for another day.”

In amazement, in desperate gratitude, Marie-Josèphe flung herself at the King’s feet and kissed the cold hard diamonds at the hem of his coat. He brushed his fingertips over her hair.

His Majesty left the tent, walking as strongly as if he had never been afflicted with gout. Innocent and his attendants accompanied him. The courtiers followed. The visitors cheered His Majesty as if their protests had had something to do with his decision.

“Let us have another sea monster story, mamselle!” shouted one of the spectators when His Majesty had left.

Cries of approval and agreement surrounded her in an opaque cloud of noise. They threatened to overwhelm her. Count Lucien grasped Marie-Josèphe’s elbow.

“Are you quite well?”

She was too faint with exhaustion and relief to get to her feet. Count Lucien pushed her sleeve above her wrist. The swelling had vanished, and the streaks had receded.

Marie-Josèphe drew back, for his touch made her tremble.

“Will he spare her?” she whispered.

“I cannot say. This is a reprieve.”

“A day...”

“Anything can happen in a day.”

oOo

Yves slipped away from the other courtiers. Agitation gripped him. If anyone saw him, they would surely send him to the madhouse. His eyes must be staring, white-rimmed; his hair must be wild as a hermit’s. He gripped the ring in his pocket. The gold burned patterns into his flesh.

He left the Green Carpet, where the courtiers attending the King were likely to see him. He strode past the Obelisk, up the hill, into the Star Garden.

He ran, his heart pounding, through the Circle.

He stumbled, panting, into the chapel. It was, of course, deserted. At the altar, before the image of the Crucifixion, he fell. He shuddered, holding back sobs till his chest and his throat ached with unshed tears. The world spun around him as if he were drunk. He lost all track of time.

Lying prone, his burning hand pressed to the cool marble floor, Yves de la Croix prayed.

21

Sherzad sang.

The sea woman’s images spun around Marie-Josèphe, a waterspout of mirages. Sea people sunbathed on a small sandy island. The sea stretched around it without interruption. The sea people, safe and happy, played with their family’s new child. The baby’s hand had begun to grow its webs, her toenails to thicken and withdraw into claws. Her hair was as soft as spume. She hummed and babbled, creating large amorphous pictures. Her mama, her sisters and brothers and cousins, her aunts and uncles, exclaimed with wonder and approval.

“On our birth islands, we are vulnerable, but we believed ourselves safe.”

Marie-Josèphe interpreted as well as she could, from a language with no words. She sketched rapidly as she spoke. The charcoal scribbles did no justice to the beauty of Sherzad’s songs, but they documented the story. Servants took the finished sketches, displayed them, pinned them up.

“We were not safe.”

A galleon appeared on the horizon. A cross blazed from its flag. Sherzad’s song broke into discord. The galleon’s cannons thrust through its gunports.

“The ships of the men of land sought us.”

The galleon came about, presenting its broadside to the tiny birth island. The cannons fired in a horrible rolling roar. Sherzad screamed in grief and pain. Men stormed the island with pikes and nets.

“They called us devils. They killed and captured us, for the glory of your god.”

Lucien heard again the sound of battle in the sea woman’s songs. He heard the screams of dying men and horses. Exhilaration took him like strong wine; despair overcame it. Sherzad’s song brought back Steenkirk, and Neerwinden.

“They took us to the mainland, to cities, they imprisoned us and tortured us, they killed us slowly.”

In Marie-Josèphe’s sketch, an Inquisitor shattered a man of the sea on the rack. In the background, a human figure burned at the stake.

Lucien heard again the catcalls of his youth, the other pages at court tormenting him: Dwarf, dwarf! Your papa is a devil and your mama is a witch!

They never stopped, until he earned the King’s esteem.

“The men of land went truly mad. They killed us, they killed their own people.”

The Church sought evidence of fornication between women and the sea demons.

What it sought, it found. It condemned any woman with a dwarf child, for the child was pure proof of congress with the devil.

“The sea people knew the men of land as enemies.”

Marie-Josèphe stared in horror at her sketch: a woman broken on the wheel and thrown into the sea, her dwarf child holding tight, sinking with her, drowning. The servant took the drawing away before she could stop him.

The servant displayed the illustration. While the rest of the audience was still applauding the pathos of Marie-Josèphe’s story, the servant reached Lucien. He tried to hurry past, but Lucien caught his wrist, made him stop, and took the sketch from him.

Lucien thought: Not long since, that woman could have been my mother. That child would have been me.

The sea monster left off its singing.

“That is all.” Marie-Josèphe’s voice shook. She turned to the sea woman. “How could you?”

The sea monster shrieked, splashed backwards, and flung water everywhere. She laughed maniacally, laughed as no beast could laugh. If Lucien had doubted Marie-Josèphe de la Croix before, now he believed everything she had ever claimed about the being, and more.

At the edge of anger, Lucien rose and left the tent. He did not care to lose his temper in public.

oOo

Lucien sat by the Reflecting Pool. If he plunged into the water he might cool his fury.

If I plunge into the water, he said to himself, I might also drown. I prefer to remain angry.

“Count Lucien!” Mlle de la Croix ran toward him, pale with dismay. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean — how could Sherzad be so cruel?”

“Have the courage to claim your own revenge.”

“My revenge? For what?”

“You offered, and I declined.”

“And I’m acting the rejected flirt? Sir, you wrong me.”

Lucien’s anger erupted. “What do you expect from a dwarf, ugly, misshapen —”

“Count Lucien, I love you.”

“That is your misfortune.”

“Your spirit is beautiful. You allowed me to see your kindness, and...” She hesitated. “Do you understand what I said? I love you.”

“Many women love me. I’m a generous man, and a knowledgeable lover.”

“You are arrogant, sir.”

“I have told you that I am. I have reason to be. I possess a title of the sword, the title of the companions of Charlemagne, a title already ancient when these upstart dukes and marquises were created. I enjoy the trust of the King. I’m heir to vast lands and great wealth —”

“I don’t care about that!” Marie-Josèphe said. “If you weren’t Lucien de Barenton, Count de Chrétien, I’d feel the same.”

“Ah. If I were a starving peasant, beaten because I couldn’t pay my taxes, my hovel pillaged by the soldiers of my own King — you’d love me?”

“You’re an atheist, and I love you.”

Lucien’s sense of the ridiculous evaporated his anger. He laughed. When he regained control of himself, he said, “Mlle de la Croix, if I were a peasant, I’d have been sold to gypsies in my cradle... or drowned, like the child in Sherzad’s story.”

“Surely, no, not now. Not you.”

“Mlle de la Croix, you want a husband.”

“Yes, Count Lucien,” she said softly.

“I’ll never marry. I’ll never bring a child into this life.”

“But your life is wonderful. The King loves you, everyone respects you —”

“Pain torments me,” he said, telling her what he never admitted to anyone, except a lover.

“Every life bears pain.”

“You have no idea what you’re saying,” he said, irritated by her ignorant assurance.

“I am in pain every moment of my existence. Except when I love a woman —” He hesitated, then began again. “When I love a woman, especially if I loved a woman, how could I pass my affliction to her children? You want a husband, you want children. I will never marry, and I will never father a child.”

“God gives us little choice in that matter,” she said. “If we choose love.”

He laughed at her. “No god has anything to do with it. Even the most unimaginative lover can trouble to wrap his member in a baudruche. We have one way to make a child, a thousand ways to love.” He said again, “I will never marry,”

“Why are you saying this to me?” she cried. “Why not say, I have no affection for you, I cannot return your love?”

“Because I promised to tell you the truth, if I knew it.”

She fell silent with hope and confusion.

“Do you still want me?” Lucien asked. “As your lover?”

“I... It isn’t right, Count Lucien, I can’t —” She blushed and stammered; she spread her hands in supplication. “The Church says — My brother wouldn’t —”

“I’m perfectly indifferent to the wishes of the church or to the demands of your brother. What do you want?”

She answered his question, if obscurely. “If you marry, your children might be —they might not —”

“My father is a dwarf. He retired, crippled —”

His father had ridden beside Louis XIII; valiant, renowned, he had ridden in the service of the child-King Louis XIV during the civil war.

Lucien’s father no longer rode.

“I am my father’s image,” Lucien said.

“Rumor says —”

“Rumor lies.”

“Many people believe it.”

“Louis has enough misshapen children without counting me among his brood.

Besides, he acknowledges his bastards.”

She sank down before him and grasped his hands.

“I didn’t make up Sherzad’s story, I didn’t conspire with her to hurt you. I heard the story as you did, as she sang it. If I’d known what she planned, I would have made up a story. I’d never willingly cause you pain. I beg you, please believe me.”