The Moon and the Sun (47 page)

“I’m sorry,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“I hoped...” Count Lucien shook his head. “What will happen, when he dies...”

“We all must die. He’d kill her for nothing.”

“No. He has public reasons to dominate the sea monsters. It adds to his glory and his power. It demonstrates the vitality of France.”

“What a great deal to ask of one small sea monster! Should she win the war, end the famine, and fill the treasury as well?”

“If she could do that by living instead of by dying,” Count Lucien said, “then His Majesty might free her.”

The moon, nearly full, blossomed over the roof of the chateau behind them. A ragged cloud passed across its face, fragmenting its silver light like falling petals. The shards of silver fell gleaming across Count Lucien’s head and shoulders, across his short hair, so blond, so fair, the color of white gold. The moonlight traced his profile, the arch of his eyebrow.

Lucien turned toward Marie-Josèphe, wondering why she had gasped.

“You aren’t His Majesty’s son!”

“So I’ve assured you,” Lucien replied.

“You’re the son of —”

“I am my father’s son.” Lucien spoke sharply, trying to distract her from her dangerous insight.

“— the queen!” she exclaimed. “Queen Marie Thérèse! You have her fair hair, her grey eyes — she loved you —”

Very few people had ever divined the truth of Lucien’s parentage, or, if they had, they had the sense to remain silent about it.

“The greater love she bore was to my father.” Lucien could not lie to Marie-Josèphe de la Croix. “And my father loved his Queen. He responded to her grave unhappiness.

He loves his King. He gave the King his respect and his friendship. The queen is dead and beyond reproach, but my father is alive: if you shout your suspicion to the world, you accuse him of treason, and me of —”

“I’ll never speak of it again,” she said.

They sat together in silence. Below them, the gardens filled with people: His Majesty’s royal guests, the court, His Majesty’s subjects. Clouds gathered above the park, blocking out the moonlight.

“How was it possible?” Marie-Josèphe whispered.

Lucien smiled. Despite the risks of knowledge, he appreciated the recomplications.

“My birth was worthy of a Molière farce. And indeed M. Molière considered a play on the subject: A noblewoman — he did not quite dare to make her the Queen — bears the child of her noble dwarf lover, who — in the midst of a dozen court observers! —exchanges his infant son for the newborn daughter of the queen’s jester’s mistress, and spirits the boy away to his gracious wife, so they may claim him as their own, while a convent fosters the changeling, and the true child returns to his true mother as her page, like any noble youth —”

“What a remarkable tangle,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“Yes.”

“Molière never wrote his play.”

“Too dangerous.”

“That never stopped M. Molière.”

“He was fearless when confronted by censors and prisons, it’s true,” Lucien said. “It isn’t so easy to be fearless when confronted by my father.”

“Your father challenged him?”

“Challenge a commoner? Certainly not. He offered to have lackeys beat him senseless for insulting the Queen. M. Molière rather lost his sense of humor about the situation.”

“Poor M. Molière.”

“Poor M. Molière indeed, he could have been the downfall of my family. And of His Majesty’s family, if Monseigneur’s birth were also called into question.”

“It’s true that Monseigneur doesn’t quite resemble —”

“Please do not insult the late Queen in my presence.”

“I beg your pardon. But why such complexity? Why not simply spirit you away?”

Amazed that she could be so intelligent and yet so naive, Lucien said, “Because the daughter of a queen and a commoner is not much threat. The son of a queen and a companion of Charlemagne might challenge the throne of France as well as Spain.”

She nodded her understanding. “What of your sister?”

“I have no sister. Do you mean the changeling?”

“Yes.”

“She’s content, she says, in her convent; she possesses all the piety my family lacks.

Her true parents were Spanish, of course, members of Her Majesty’s retinue.”

“Doesn’t she want to live in the world?”

“Perhaps not,” Lucien said, “for she too is a dwarf. And a Moor, with a Christian vocation. She’s respected where she is. France is her home. Where would she go? To the Spanish court as her true father’s successor? She could speak truths to their pathetic king, but he’d never hear her.”

“Is this why you’ve decided not to have children?”

“Because they might be snatched away and put on the throne of Spain?” Lucien laughed. “A horrible fate. No, I told you why I’ll never father a child. Why do you think there’s any other reason?”

“What of the future of your house? And your ancient title?”

“My younger brother will carry it on.”

“Your brother! Does he —”

“Resemble me? Not in any way.”

“— come to court?”

“Not if I can keep him from it.”

“Why not?”

Lucien sighed. “My brother’s a fool.”

“I cannot believe it!”

“Don’t misunderstand me. Guy is perfectly amiable. He’s good-hearted. But as for wit, or intelligence — he has neither. He allows himself to be drawn into mischief, thinking only that it will be good fun.”

“And yet you give him the future of your family.”

“I found him a good wife,” Lucien said. “She’s of excellent origin and no little fortune. She isn’t her own first cousin. Even better, she isn’t Guy’s first cousin. She’s fond of Guy and she manages the family well. Her children are a joy. When my nephew comes of age, I’ll grant him the title comte de Chrétien. He won’t disgrace it.”

“Will your nephew have your spirit?”

“He’ll have my mother’s spirit — and my brother’s strong back.”

“What of —” Marie-Josèphe said hesitantly. “What of the woman you call mother?

Your father’s wife? Did she hate you terribly?”

“I honor and love her. She’s my mother, as her husband is my brother’s father.”

“In the eyes of the law, but — ?”

“In the line of inheritance, which is the important thing. We’re both acknowledged, and legitimate, and cherished. She treats me graciously, as my father treats her son. She and my father are dearest lovers. Unlike most husbands and wives, they aren’t unfaithful to each other for their pleasure or their love. Only for their children.”

“Who is your brother’s father?”

“That isn’t my secret to tell,” Lucien replied. “You must ask me some other question.”

She thought for a moment. “How did you come to leave court? I can hardly imagine you anywhere else.”

“I didn’t leave willingly. I left in disgrace.”

“I cannot believe it!”

“Do you see in me no potential for disobedience?”

Marie-Josèphe laughed. “You’d disobey any order, you ignore all convention! But, displease the King? Never.”

“Youthful foolishness. I was barely fifteen.”

He had never told anyone the truth, that he took the blame for his brother’s foolishness. He was the eldest, after all; it was his responsibility to help Guy find his place in His Majesty’s court. At that he had failed. Guy bore the worst punishment; His Majesty never exiled him, but Lucien sent him home to Brittany and refused all his entreaties for a second invitation to Versailles.

“His Majesty’s punishment worked to my great advantage,” he said. “He sent me with his embassy to Morocco. To learn diplomacy, he said. We travelled through Arabia, Egypt, the Levant.”

“The greatest mathematicians in the world lived in Arabia,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“Until M. Newton.”

“I didn’t have the honor of meeting Arabic mathematicians,” Lucien said. “But I met sheiks and warriors and holy men. I rode with the Bedouins. My sword was forged in Damascus. I lived in a hareem.”

“A hareem — but how?”

“On our journey, we all fell ill, with a dreadful flux — I’ll spare you the details.”

“I know the details.”

“I am sorry to hear it. The Sultan took us into his household. A less brave and ethical man would have put us out to die. Some of us did die, but his altruism saved most of us. His physicians watched over the grown men. The women of the household cared for the boys, the pages, for in the house of a devout Mahometan, the men live in one part of the house, the women and girls in another. Young boys live in the women’s quarters until they reach a certain age and develop a certain attention.

“As a youth,” Lucien said with dry directness, “I was rather small. In the chaos of illness and darkness and death, I was mistaken for a page of ten, rather than a young man of fifteen. No one in the embassy could say it was a mistake and call me back. We were too sick. I came to my senses all unaware, wondering if a god really did exist —”

“Of course He does!”

“Then He is Allah, and He brought me into His garden to mock my disbelief. I awoke in the women’s quarters.”

“They made short work of putting you out, I’m certain.”

“No — how could they? I’d be killed, or worse. The women — the Sultan’s wives, his daughters, his brothers’ wives, his sons’ wives — would be disgraced. They could be divorced. Or stoned to death.”

“How did you escape?”

“I did not. I stayed until the last day of the embassy, when I crept out over the rooftops and joined the caravan home. The women kept my secret. I became their secret.

They were women of intelligence and kindness and passion, locked away from the world, kept at the mercy of men’s whims.”

“And you were a youth of a certain age and attention.”

“Indeed I was.”

“Tempted into sin. At the mercy of their whims.”

Lucien laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I honor their mercy and their whims. They awakened me. Before that time, I’d never lived for a moment when my body didn’t pain me.”

“You’re no better than their husbands, who imprisoned them!” Marie-Josèphe cried.

“You took your pleasure from them and placed them in danger.”

“I took nothing. Ours was an exchange of gifts. My gifts were clumsy and ill-made to begin with, I admit, but they were sincere, and my beloved friends were patient. I learned nothing of diplomacy during those months. Instead, I learned the art of rapture.

I learned how to give it and how to receive it. I learned how much more it’s worth when it’s both given and received.”

Lucien fell silent. Marie-Josèphe tried to make herself feel disgusted and offended, as she knew she should, but his story moved her.

How much I would have cherished a secret friend, in the convent, she thought. Not a man! Not for... Not for rapture. For affection, for conversation, for friendship, for all the things forbidden me because they would distract from the love of God. If a pagan, a heretic, had appeared in my cell and begged for asylum, I would have hidden her and protected her.

“If you lived in rapture, why are you sad?” she demanded, for Lucien stared across the water with a far-away and melancholy expression.

Lucien remained silent for so long, she thought he would not reply.

“The amiable Sultan’s eldest son, the crown prince... He took a young wife, that is, a new concubine... She was fourteen, homesick, but she could never go home — she’d been enslaved, and sold. She had been used to liberty... Her gaze was like a trapped bird. We became friends.”

He stopped to govern his voice.

“She had as little experience as I. Her sister wives could tell her what to do to please her husband, when he demanded her presence and compelled her first submission.

They could have told him how to please her, even when he claimed her virginity. But he never listened to their wisdom. He took her. He forced her. He raped her.”

Lucien rubbed his hand across his forehead, hiding his eyes from the memory.

“But, he was her husband,” Marie-Josèphe said as gently as she could. “He couldn’t rape —”

“Don’t preach your ignorance to me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“By their law — by your law — he couldn’t rape her. What she surrendered to was rape, all the worse because she couldn’t resist, she couldn’t object, she couldn’t refuse.

Should we have comforted her by saying, Your husband acted within the law?”

“It’s God’s will, M. de Chrétien, for women to suffer.” Marie-Josèphe hoped that explaining properly might bring Count Lucien to belief. “If she were a Christian, she would have understood and submitted willingly.”

“I cannot fathom why you accept such arrant lunacy.” He spoke quietly. “If she were a Christian, you’d consign her to hell, for she killed herself.”

Recovering from her dismay, Marie-Josèphe whispered, “I am so sorry. I’m sorry for your friend’s pain, for your grief, and for my inexcusable condescension.” She took his hand. He turned away, hiding his bright tears, but he permitted her touch.

A rocket blazed across the sky.

Fireworks burst in a great floating carpet from the Grand Canal to the chateau. A hundred colors painted patterns in the sky. The roof tiles trembled with the noise. In the midst of the roar of rockets, the spectators cheered.

A burst of blue and gold formed a great expanding sphere. Small red rockets streaked over it. The low clouds reflected the light of the fireworks, an eerie, distorted mirror. The explosions formed a solid presence.

Gunpowder smoke hovered, pungent and gritty. Lucien lay back on the warm tiles and gazed into the sky.

“Is this what war is like?” Marie-Josèphe asked.

“Not in the least. It lacks the mud, the discomfort, the fear. It lacks the screams of dying men and disemboweled horses. It lacks severed limbs, and death. It lacks the exhilaration, and the glory.”

The fireworks continued, embroidering the sky with needles of color and light. A golden letter “L” and its mirror image, surrounded by flowers and starbursts, brightened the gardens to day.

Marie-Josèphe leaped up, climbed over the edge of the roof, and disappeared.

Startled, Lucien followed her. In her room, she struggled into her clothes. Standing on the window seat, the cat glaring at him slit-eyed from the shadows, Lucien said, “May I help you?”