The Moon and the Sun (59 page)

In dangerous water among submerged fingers of stone, Marie-Josèphe stopped the skiff. At the mouth of the cove, Sherzad leaped from the water, flicked her tails in the air, dove, and disappeared.

“Here,” Marie-Josèphe said.

Sailors stripped and splashed over the side.

“Send all your men into the water.”

“Your Majesty,” the captain said, “the rest cannot swim. They must keep their strength — and their lives — to row us back.”

His Majesty acceded with reluctant grace. “Very well.”

The divers submerged, and ascended, and vanished again. Soon they were shivering. One surfaced coughing and half drowned. Louis allowed him five minutes’

rest.

“The sea monster has played you an ugly trick, Mlle de la Croix,” the King said.

“The treasure fleet is here,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“Dive again,” the King said to the exhausted sailor.

Marie-Josèphe sang to Sherzad, asking for more direction. She received no answer.

“She’s gone. Perhaps I’ll never see her again.” She wept. Only the touch of Lucien’s hand kept her heart from breaking.

As far away as she could see, a tiny splash burst from the ocean, and another, and a third, all in a group. Suddenly frightened, Marie-Josèphe trembled.

The exhausted sailor splashed through the surface, thrashing, kicking, shouting incoherently. His mates surfaced with him. The rowers thrust pikes and oars over the side, fearing sharks.

“For His Majesty’s glory!”

The divers raised their arms. The weight of handsful of gold and jewels pushed them back underwater. They struggled to the skiff and poured their treasures in a heap before the King.

oOo

A closed carriage drove Marie-Josèphe and Lucien to Versailles, at the end of a procession of wagons filled with treasure. His Majesty led in an open caleche. Aztec gold covered him like armor and decked the harness of his horses and spilled out to the wheels. A hundred musketeers guarded the convoy. People lined the road and cheered their King and stared at the treasure in wonder.

Marie-Josèphe peeked past the heavy curtain. Dust and shouts filtered into the carriage.

“He must admit he was wrong,” Marie-Josèphe said. “And we were right.”

“No,” Lucien said. “Right, wrong — what’s important is that we defied him.”

“But that’s nonsense.”

“He can’t afford to forgive us.” Lucien sighed theatrically. “I accept His Majesty’s wrath... As long as he doesn’t sentence us to the galleys — and send us to sea for the rest of our lives.”

Marie-Josèphe managed to return his smile. Lucien twisted the handle of his sword-cane and drew the broken blade.

“It served me well,” he said.

“And Sherzad. And me.”

He sheathed it and locked it. In the dimness of the carriage, his clear grey gaze touched Marie-Josèphe as gently as he had held her hand.

Marie-Josèphe moved from her side of the carriage to his. She took his hand, drew off his glove, and removed his rings. She hesitated when she reached the heavy sapphire, but he did not stop her. She slipped His Majesty’s ring from Lucien’s finger.

She pressed her cheek against his palm.

They leaned toward each other. They kissed.

Marie-Josèphe drew back, touching her lips with her fingertips, amazed that such a simple touch could reach all the way to her center.

Misinterpreting her surprise, Lucien smiled sadly. “Even your kiss can’t change me to a tall prince, with dainty feet.”

“If it did, I’d say, Where is Lucien? Give me back my Lucien!”

He laughed, with no trace of sadness.

oOo

Guards took Lucien away as soon as the carriage reached the chateau. They conducted Marie-Josèphe to her attic room and left her with only Hercules for company. If Yves was in his bedroom she could not speak to him through two locked doors and the dressing-room.

Hercules miaowed for cream, despite the mouse stomachs and mouse tails left over from his hunts.

“You may ask for cream in prison,” Marie-Josèphe said, “but you may hope prison rats are tasty.”

She comforted herself with her last sight of Sherzad, leaping with joy in the sea, and with her memory of Lucien’s kiss.

His Majesty will forgive us, she thought. He’ll forgive me because I was right, and because he loved my mother. He’ll forgive Yves because Yves is his son. And he’ll forgive Lucien because he never had a better friend, a friend who defied him once, to help him.

She spared no more thoughts for the soul of Louis the Great.

The key turned in the lock; the door opened. Marie-Josèphe leaped to her feet, her heart pounding.

A scullery maid slipped inside, put down a tray laden with wine and bread and a pitcher of cream, and faced her. Haleed had put away her finery and tied a cloth over her hair.

Marie-Josèphe flung herself into Haleed’s arms.

No one who took a second look at her could ever mistake her for a scullery maid, Marie-Josèphe thought. But... no one at Versailles ever takes a second look — or a first

— at a scullery maid.

They sat together on the window seat. Hercules butted his head against Haleed’s hand until she gave him his cream.

“What are you doing here?” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “If His Majesty finds out, he’ll be angry —”

“I don’t mind, I don’t care,” Haleed said, “for I’m leaving Versailles, leaving Paris, leaving France in a moment. As soon as I change these awful clothes!” She grew somber.

“I cannot help you, Mlle Marie, but I had to see you.”

“I’ve failed you, sister.” Marie-Josèphe took the parchment of Haleed’s manumission from her drawing box and gazed at it sadly. “I never had a moment to ask Yves to sign it. To make him sign it!”

Haleed took the parchment. “He’ll sign it.” She kissed Marie-Josèphe. “I’m sorry I cannot free you.”

“Only the King can do that. Sister, I’m so afraid for you. Where will you go? What will you do?”

“Never fear. I am rich, I will be free. I can make my way in the world. I’ll go home to Turkey. I’ll find my family, and a prince.”

“Turkey! When you marry they’ll put you in a hareem, with another wife —”

Haleed sat back and regarded her quizzically. “Sister, how is it different from France, except that my sister wives will be acknowledged instead of hidden and lied about and put aside at whim?”

“But it — I —” She fell silent, unable to answer, terrified for her sister.

“How is it different from Martinique?” Haleed said.

The blood drained from Marie-Josèphe’s face, leaving her cold and faint.

“Oh,” she said. “Sister, do you mean...”

“I mean we are sisters — how could you not know? Our father owned my mother, she was his, he did as he pleased, without a thought to what would please her. Or what would horrify her.”

Marie-Josèphe’s shoulders slumped. She stared at her hands, limp in her lap.

“Do you hate him terribly? Did she? Do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate him. It is fate. I love you, Mlle Marie, though I’ll never see you again.”

“I love you too, Mlle Haleed, even if I never see you again.”

Haleed pressed a knotted kerchief into Marie-Josèphe’s hand.

“Your pearls!”

“Not all of them! We promised to share our fortunes. I must go.”

They kissed each other. Haleed slipped out the door. She was gone, to embrace an unknown fate that frightened Marie-Josèphe even more than her own.

oOo

Lucien dreaded the approaching interview. The King was too angry with him, too disappointed, to put his fate in the hands of his guards or his jailers. Lucien had every material thing he wanted, clean linen and food and wine. He was treated with scrupulous courtesy. His back hurt only in its ordinary way.

He had everything but liberty, communication, the comfort of intimacy. He hung suspended at a great height, waiting only for Louis to let him fall. He hoped he would not take Marie-Josèphe with him to the depths.

The musketeers took Lucien to the guard room outside His Majesty’s private chamber, where Marie-Josèphe and Yves already waited.

How strange, Lucien thought. The joy of seeing her is equal to the ecstasy of her touch.

He took her hand. Together, they went to face the King.

Treasure filled the room, stacked and tumbled in heaps like an ancient dragon’s hoard. Gold bracelets and pectorals and armor lay in jumbled piles, with headdresses, medallions, and strange flared cylinders. Impassive jade statues clustered on the parquet. One of them eerily resembled Lucien’s father.

His Majesty gazed into the eye sockets of a crystal skull. Pope Innocent sat beside him, indifferent to the treasure, counting a rosary of ordinary beads. The beads tapped against a wooden box in his lap: Marie-Josèphe’s drawing box. A table piled with books and papers stood beside him.

The King picked up a gold pectoral, lowered it over his head, and arranged the curls of his black wig. The wide flare of gold covered his chest.

The strange eyes of gold statues stared from every direction. Louis regarded his prisoners in silence.

“I loved you all.” To Marie-Josèphe he said, “You pleased me with your beauty and your charm and your music.” To Yves he said, “I marveled at your discoveries. I was proud to be your sire.” After a long pause, he turned to Lucien. “I valued your wit, your bravery, your loyalty. I valued the truth you told me.”

He flung the skull to the floor. “You betrayed me.” The crystal smashed. Shards exploded across the parquet.

“Father de la Croix.”

“Yes.” Yves cleared his throat. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I give you to His Holiness, and I command you to obey him without question.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Yves whispered.

“Mlle de la Croix.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Her voice was as strong and as pure as the sea woman’s song.

“You’ve offended me and my holy cousin as well. You must accept punishment from us both.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Innocent made her wait until he had finished the rosary.

“I forbid you this ridiculous desire to compose music,” Innocent said. “Not to save your modesty, for you are lost, but as a punishment. You must be silent.”

Marie-Josèphe stared at the floor.

“Very well,” Louis said. “Though it’s a shame, for she might have been very good if she were a man. Mlle de la Croix, my punishment is this. You desire a husband, and children. I thought to forbid these to you, to send you to a convent.”

Marie-Josèphe paled.

I’ll break it down, Lucien thought. I’ll lay siege to the walls as if it were a prison, an enemy city in war —

“But that is too simple a solution,” Louis said.

He turned away from Marie-Josèphe and addressed himself to Lucien.

“You will leave court.”

I was right not to hope for a lesser punishment, Lucien thought.

“You will resign the governorship of Brittany to M. du Maine. You will resign your title and your lands to your brother.”

Lucien’s plans for the good of his family trembled in his hands.

“And you will marry Mlle de la Croix. You may live on the dowry I promised her. If you do not give her children, you will break her heart. If you do give her children, you will dishonor your sworn word, to the woman you love — as you dishonored it to me.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Lucien’s pride finally failed him. He could barely speak.

“I’ve condescended to spare your lives — but I wish never to see any of you again.”

He nodded graciously to Innocent. “Here is your priest, cousin.”

“Did the sea woman repent?” Innocent asked.

“No, Your Holiness.”

“She declared war on the men of land,” Marie-Josèphe said. “And then she disappeared.”

“I should excommunicate you all.”

Yves fell to his knees.

“I shall not. Father de la Croix, you will have use for your priestly authority. Holy Mother Church faces a terrible threat. The sea monsters —”

“They’re people, Your Holiness!” Marie-Josèphe said.

“Yes,” said Innocent.

Lucien was as surprised as Marie-Josèphe and Yves, that the holy man would admit something so damaging to his influence.

“Your Holiness,” Yves said, “they’re nearly extinct because of the Church. Instead of offering them the word of God —”

“That is why —”

“— we tormented them as demons —”

“— history must be —”

“— and we preyed on them as cattle. I —” Yves cut off his words when he realized he had interrupted Innocent.

“— corrected.” Innocent nodded. “History must be corrected,” he said again.

Innocent opened the drawing box. He drew out a handful of pages: Marie-Josèphe’s dissection sketches. He crumpled one. He thrust its edge into the candle flame. It burned to his fingers. He dropped the ashes in a golden Aztec dish.

“Father de la Croix, your penance is this. You will search out every mention of the sea monsters.”

He snatched M. Boursin’s book from the table beside him, and flung it to the floor.

“Every book.”

He scattered a sheaf of letters, the current prize of the King’s Black Cabinet, waiting to be read, many addressed by Madame’s bold handwriting.

“Every letter.”

He ripped a handful of pages from the current volume of M. de Dangeau’s journal.

“Every chronicle of this self-indulgent celebration of the monsters. This week of Carrousel must vanish utterly.”

He flung down a handful of broadsheets, the Stories of Sherzad.

“Every painting, every myth, every memory of the creatures. The decree of the Church that raised them from demons to beasts.”

He handed Yves a roll of vellum, inscribed with black ink and illuminated with gold and scarlet.

“You will erase the existence of the sea monsters from our conscience. And from our posterity. You will do as you know you should.”

Yves bowed his head. He unrolled the vellum and held it to the candle flame. It smoked, contorted, burned. The stench of burning leather filled the chamber. With blistered fingers, Yves dropped the ashes into the Aztec dish.

Innocent rose.

“Who gives this woman?”

Yves remained silent.

“I do,” His Majesty said.

oOo

I am married, Marie-Josèphe thought. Married by the Prince of Rome, given in marriage by the King of France and Navarre... and I’m perfectly indifferent to the honor. I care only that I love Lucien, and he loves me.