Waters of Versailles (6 page)

Sylvain puffed up at the praise. Gérard returned with a beefy Turk. The dancer's fingers were blue from the cold, and he struggled to fill Madame's saucer without dribbling.

“Just like a commander on the battlefield, a woman judges a man by his actions.” She lifted the monkey and planted a kiss between its ears. “Any other man would have collared this monkey's neck with a diamond bracelet before presenting it to a lady of the court. We would call that vulgar.”

Her ladies nodded.

“You have taste and discernment. So give me champagne, free-flowing and cold. That is a triumph worthy of Versailles.” She presented her hand to Sylvain again, then waved him away. The ladies closed around her like a curtain.

“Vulgar, indeed,” said Gérard as they retreated. “I've never seen woman greet a diamond with anything other than screeches of delight. Have you?”

“My experience with diamonds is limited.”

“Madame knows it. She was spreading you with icing.”

“She wants to secure a valuable ally. Compliments are the currency of court.”

Gérard drained his champagne and rubbed his knuckles over his jaw as if it ached. “She just wants to drink champagne at another man's expense. As with most pleasures, it comes with a little pain. She wants the pain to be yours, not hers.”

“The champagne fountain is a whim. She will ask me for something else next time.”

“Very well. Madame will ask you to do something expensive and original with only a few pretty words as payment. Will you do it?”

Two full glasses of red wine had been abandoned at the foot of a statue. Sylvain fetched them and passed one to his friend. After the sweet champagne, the warm wine tasted flat and murky as swamp water.

“Only a fool would pass up the opportunity.”

-11-

“Papa, come play!”

The nixie swam backward against a vortex of current, dodging spinning hunks of ice that floated like miniature icebergs, splintering and splitting as they smashed together. Overhead, the red-and-blue parrot climbed among the fern fronds, screeching and flapping its wings.

As he had suspected, the little fish loved ice. He had once seen a nixie swimming at the foot of a glacier, playing with ice boulders as they calved from the ice field's flank. The nixie had pushed them around like kindling, building a dam that spread a wide lake of turquoise meltwater over the moraine.

“Papa, come play!”

“Papa!” The parrot screeched its name.

Sylvain had purchased the bird from an elderly lady who was moldering in a north-wing garret, wearing threadbare finery from the Sun King's reign and living off charity and crumbs of her neighbors' leftover meals. The parrot was a good companion for the little fish. It was old and wily, and with its sharp beak and talons, it was well equipped to protect itself if she got too rough. It could fly out of reach and was fast enough to dodge sprays and splashes.

“Papa?” The nixie levered herself up the lip of her nest and stared at Sylvain expectantly. “Papa come play?”

Sylvain felt in his pockets for the last of the walnuts. “Here, little one. See if you can lure Papa down with this.”

“Bird! Food!” she yelled, waving the walnut aloft. The parrot kited down to the nest and plucked the nut from her fist.

“Come play, Papa?” she asked. She wasn't looking at the bird. Her uncanny gaze was for him alone.

“That's quite enough of that,” he said. “The bird's name is Papa, and you'll do well to remember it, young lady.”

She leaned close and spoke slowly, explaining. “Bird is Bird, Papa is Papa.”

“Papa,” agreed the parrot, its beady gaze fixed on Sylvain.

“You are impossible.” Sylvain waved at the surface of the pond, which was now carpeted with icy slurry circulating in the slowing current. “Clear away your toys or I'll freeze swimming across.”

“Papa go away?”

“The bird is staying here with you. I am going to see about my important business. When I come back, I'll bring more walnuts for Papa and nothing for you. Now clean up the ice.”

She laughed and dove. The water bubbled like a soup pot, forcing the slush to congeal into wads the size of lily pads. As the turbulence increased the leaves tilted and stacked, climbing into columns of gleaming ice that stretched and branched overhead.

The parrot flew to the top of a column and nibbled at the ice. It was solid and hard as rock.

“Very impressive,” breathed Sylvain.

He had spent the past few days running up debts with the village icemongers and pushing cartloads of straw-wrapped ice blocks down the tunnels. Though she had never seen ice, she had taken to it instinctively, tossing it around the grotto, building walls and dams, smashing and splitting the blocks into shard and slag, and playing in the slush like a pig in mud. But now she was creating ice. This was extraordinary.

“Come here, little one,” he said.

Obedient for the moment, she slipped over the surface to tread water at the edge of the nest. Above the water, her pale green skin was furred with frost. Steam snaked from her nostrils and gill slits.

“Show me how you did that,” he said.

She blinked. “Show me how, Papa?”

He spoke slowly. “The ice was melted into slush, but you froze it again, building this.” He pointed to an ice branch. The parrot sidestepped along the branch, bobbing its head and gobbling to itself. “Can you do it again?”

She shrugged. “You are impossible.”

He scooped up a fistful of water and held it out in his cupped hand. “Give it a try. Can you freeze this?”

The little fish peered up at him with that familiar imploring, pleading expression. He could hear her request even before she opened her mouth.

“Sing a song?”

Gifts were one thing but blatant bribery was another. If he began exchanging favor for favor, it would be a constant battle. But he had no time for arguments. He could risk a small bribe.

“I will sing you one song—a very short song—and only because you have been such a good girl today. But first freeze this water.”

“One song,” she agreed.

Heat radiated up his arm. The water in his fist crackled and jumped, forming quills of ice that spread from his palm like a chestnut conker. He was so astonished that he forgot to breathe for a few moments. Then he drew in a great breath and let himself sing.

The foresters of home played great lilting reels on pipes and fiddles. Their lives were as poor and starved as the shepherds in the meadows above or the farmers in the valley below, but they were proud and honed the sense of their own superiority as sharp as the edges on their axes. Their songs bragged of prowess at dancing, singing, making love, and of course at the daredevil feats required by their trade. The song that came to his lips told of a young man proving his worth by riding a raft of logs down a grassy mountainside in full view of the lowly villagers in the valley below.

He only meant to give her the first verse, but the little fish danced and leaped with such joy that he simply gave himself over to the song—abandoned himself so completely that halfway through the second verse, he found himself punctuating the rhythm with sharp staccato hand claps just as proudly as any forester. He sang all six verses, and when he was done, she leapt into his arms and hugged her thin arms around his neck.

“Papa sing good,” she whispered, her breath chill in his ear.

He patted her between the shoulder blades. Her skin was cold and clammy under a skiff of frost. Sylvain leaned back and loosened her arms a bit so he could examine her closely. Her eyes were keen, her skin bright. She was strong and healthy, and if she was a bit troublesome and a little demanding, it was no more than any child.

-12-

“Annette tells me you had your men run water to the north wing.”

Madame reclined on a golden sofa, encased and seemingly immobilized by the jagged folds of her silver robe. Her cleavage, shoulders, and neck protruded—a stem to support her rosebud-pale face. Her ladies gathered around her, gaudy in their bright, billowing silks.

Annette avoided his eye. Sylvain brushed imaginary lint from his sleeve, feigning unconcern. “I believe my foreman mentioned that they had finally gotten so far. I gave the orders months ago.”

“Everyone has a throne now. Madame de Beauvilliers claims to possess one exactly like mine. She shows it to her neighbors and even lets her maid sit on it.”

“Your throne was one of the first in the palace, Madame, and remains the finest.”

“Being first is no distinction when a crowd of nobodies have the newest. No doubt our village merchants will be bragging about their own thrones in a day or two.”

Sylvain twitched. He had just been considering running pipes through the village and renting toilets there. Merchants had the cash flow to sustain monthly payments, and unlike courtiers, they were used to paying their debts promptly.

“No indeed, Madame. I assure you I am extremely careful to preserve the privileges of rank. I am no populist.”

“And how will you preserve my distinction? Will you give me a second throne to sit in my dressing room? A pedestal for a pampered pet? If a cat has a throne, surely you can give me one for each of my ladies. We shall put them in a circle here in my salon and sit clucking at each other like laying hens.”

Her ladies giggled obediently. Annette stared at the floor and wrung the feathers of her fan like the neck of a Christmas goose. Just a few more twists and she would break the quills.

Madame glared at him. Angry color stained her cheeks, visible even through her heavy powder. “If every north-wing matron can brag about her throne, you may remove mine. I am bored of it. Take the vulgar thing away and throw it in the rubbish.”

If Sylvain took just two steps closer, he could loom over her and glare down from his superior height. But intimidation wasn't possible. She held the whip and knew her power. If she abandoned her toilet, the whole palace would follow fashion. He would be ruined.

He strolled to the window and examined a vase of forced flowers, careful to keep his shoulders loose, his step light. “My dear madame, the thrones don't matter. You might as well keep yours.”

Madame's eyebrows climbed to the edge of her wig. Annette dropped her fan. The ivory handle clattered on the marble with a skeletal rattle. Sylvain sniffed one of the blossoms, a monstrous pale thing with pistils like spikes.

“Is that so,” said Madame, iron in her voice. “Enlighten me.”

“We need not speak of them further. If possessing a throne conveyed distinction, it was accidental. They are a convenience for bodily necessity, nothing more. Having a throne was once a privilege, but it has been superseded.”

“By what?” Madame twisted on her divan to watch him, unsettling her artfully composed tableau. He had her now.

“By the thing your heart most desires, flowing freely like a tap from a spring. So cold it chills the tongue. So fresh, the bubbles spark on the palate. Sweet as the rain in heaven and pure as a virgin's child. I believe you hold a day in February close to your heart? A particularly auspicious day?”

“I do, and it is coming soon.”

“You will find your wishes fulfilled. Count on my support.”

A slow grin crept over Madame's face. “It's possible you are a man of worth after all, Sylvain de Guilherand, and I need not counsel my ladies against you.”

She dismissed him. Sylvain was careful not to betray the tremor in his limbs as he strolled through her apartment. The rooms were lined with mirrors, each one throwing his groomed and powdered satin-clad reflection back at him. He could put his fist through any one of those mirrors. It would feel good for a moment—the glass would shatter around his glove and splinter this overheated, foul, wasteful place into a thousand shards.

But if he showed his anger, he would betray himself. Any outburst would reveal a childish lack of self-control and provide gossip that would be told and retold long after he had been forgotten.

Sylvain found the nearest service corridor and descended to the cellars. He got a bottle of champagne from one of the king's stewards—a man who knew him well enough to extend the mercy of credit. He bought a bag of walnuts and half a cheese from a provisioner's boy who was wise enough to demand coin. The Duc d'Orléans' baker gave him a loaf of dark bread and made a favor of it. Then he slipped out of the palace and made his way to the cisterns.

The little fish dozed on a branch of her ice tree, thin limbs dangling. The bird was rearranging the nest, plucking at fern fronds and clucking to itself.

“You're fancy,” the little fish said, her voice sleepy.

Sylvain looked down. He was in full court garb, a manikin in satin, wrapped in polished leather and studded with silver buttons.

He pulled off his wig and settled himself on a boulder. “Do I look like a man of worth to you, little one?”

“Worth what, Papa?”

He grimaced. “My dear, that is exactly the question.”

He spread a handkerchief at his feet and made a feast for himself. Good cheese and fresh bread made a better meal than many he'd choked back on campaign, better even than most palace feasts with dishes hauled in from the village or up from the cellar kitchens, cold, salty, and studded with congealed fat. A man could live on bread and cheese. Many did worse. And many went gouty and festered on meat drowning in sauce.

The parrot winged over to investigate. Sylvain offered it a piece of cheese. It nuzzled the bread and plucked at the bag of walnuts. Sylvain untied the knot and the bird flapped away with a nut clenched in each taloned foot.

The little fish stretched and yawned. She slipped from the branch, surfaced at the edge of the pool, and padded over to him.

“Stinky,” she said, nose wrinkling.

“The cheese? You're no French girl.” He pared a sliver for her. She refused it. “Some bread?”

She shook her head.