The Moon and the Sun (41 page)

The sea woman returned to her thoughts. Marie-Josèphe could not glory in her own taste of freedom, when her friend swam round and round in the filthy brackish water, trapped, she who had been used to swimming in the clean deep sea, any distance, any direction, governed solely by her will. Only His Majesty could restore her to her home and her family.

“Mlle de la Croix —”

Marie-Josèphe started. So intent had she been on the sea woman’s peril that she had forgotten her own.

“— you must give me a token to carry, like a knight of old.” Chartres plucked at a bit of her lace, smiling, his wild eye giving him a rakish look. The breeze ruffled the long white plumes in his hat.

The Duke of Berwick rode beside him, which astonished Marie-Josèphe. Madame would surely disapprove of her son’s associating with a bastard, even James Fitzjames, the King of England’s natural son.

“Let my friend Chartres be your champion, do,” Berwick said. He spoke with a heavy accent, but he did not lisp like his father, and he was very handsome.

“I have no token, sir,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“Come now, you must — an earring, a handkerchief, a lacing from your corset —”

“A ruffle from your petticoat,” Lorraine said from her other side.

The men on their larger horses pinned her between them. Zachi liked this no more than Marie-Josèphe. She flattened her ears and stamped one hind foot.

“If I give you my handkerchief, sir, I will not have one, and my mother would be ashamed to see me.”

The drumming neared, a wall of sound.

The ground thundered as the ancient aurochs, freed from the Menagerie, lumbered from the forest. The hunting party cried out in amazement and appreciation of the exotic creature.

The aurochs plowed the earth with its hooves; it ripped leaves to shreds with the points of its long horns. It bellowed and tossed its head, glaring about it with age-dimmed eyes. The other hunters held their fire, in respect of their King’s right to take the huge bull.

His Majesty aimed. The aurochs drank the air with wide wet nostrils. As if scenting the danger of gunpowder, it lowered its head and charged the royal caleche.

His Majesty fired.

The aurochs thundered toward him. Its wound pumped blood straight from its heart.

“Your mother is dead, Mlle de la Croix,” Lorraine said.

“You are cruel, sir.”

Count Lucien calmly handed His Majesty another loaded gun. With equal assurance, His Majesty aimed, and fired.

The aurochs stumbled, recovered, and plunged on.

Even Chartres hesitated with astonishment, but the game Lorraine led was too tempting. He leaned from his saddle and snatched at Marie-Josèphe’s petticoat lace.

His Majesty aimed, and fired a third time.

The aurochs lurched and fell, crashing to the earth before His Majesty, running as it lay. It spattered blood all around, on the ground, on the caleche, on His Majesty’s dark gold coat. When it died, the hunters cheered His Majesty’s elegant shooting.

“You are missing your hunt, sir.” Marie-Josèphe slapped Chartres’ hand away; this time she meant to hurt him.

The forest trembled like a creature alive. Camels shambled from it, and stags raced out, too many to count. Rabbits scampered headlong after them. A fox rushed into the meadow, its tail bushed with fright. Freed by His Majesty’s first kill, the hunters fired, volley after volley as the bearers handed them newly loaded guns. The camels bellowed, fell to their knees, and toppled over dead. Stags screamed and fell. Rabbits plunged over their bodies, then tumbled, shattered, across the grass.

Madame, in her scarlet livery, aimed and fired with intense calm. The fox leaped into the air, its shriek piercing the cacophony of guns and drums, and fell dead at her horse’s feet.

“His Majesty’s hunt bores me, mademoiselle,” Chartres said. “I’ve found another that I like better.”

Chartres plucked the lace at her throat. Marie-Josèphe backed Zachi, but Lorraine blocked their way. The lace ripped. Lorraine pulled one of the pins from her hair.

Arabian oryxes burst from the forest. The hunting party redoubled their fire. As if felled by a single shot, the antelopes tumbled forward in a tangle of slender legs and slender spiral horns, robbed of their grace by death. Screaming murder, iridescent peacocks flapped and lumbered onto the hunting field, scrambling among the dead stags, over the rabbits in their death-throes.

Gunsmoke roiled up and hid the forest, while the roar of gunfire drowned out the noise of the beaters. The breeze stirred the powder-smoke like thick fog.

Marie-Josèphe urged Zachi forward. Berwick’s charger stepped in front of her.

Chartres snatched at the lace again, tearing it from her throat. Lorraine tugged at the lace of her sleeve, dragging it against the painful cut of Dr. Fagon’s lancet.

A cloud of terrified grouse erupted from the underbrush, flapping wildly, so frightened they flew into danger instead of running to safety. Berwick’s horse shied, startling Lorraine’s and Chartres’ mounts.

Gyrfalcons screeched and arrowed toward their prey. Their claws hit the plump birds with the soft thud of crushed wings.

Marie-Josèphe touched Zachi’s mouth with the reins. The Arabian rushed backwards, reared and spun and leaped into a gallop. Chartres and Berwick and Lorraine pounded down the trail after her. Zachi sped past gamesmen opening wicker baskets, flinging a score of gobbling dindon from America into the air. Zachi never wavered when the stout brown birds erupted, into the range of the hunters’ guns.

Hoofbeats echoed so close that Marie-Josèphe feared to look back; she urged Zachi on. Chartres, the lightest of the three men, grasped the hem of Marie-Josèphe’s habit and nearly unseated her, but she tightened her right leg around the saddle-crook and shouted for Zachi to run, to flee.

Zachi ran, joyous and sure-footed, skimming over the path, outdistancing the larger horses. The hoofbeats and snorts fell behind. The laughter of the pursuers turned to irritation, then to anger. Marie-Josèphe leaned as close to Zachi’s neck as the sidesaddle allowed.

Zachi outdistanced the horses, the riders, the clamor of the hunt. Marie-Josèphe rode alone. She sat back; Zachi slowed her headlong run. The mare cantered, then trotted, then walked, along the main branch of a tangle of manicured trails, flicking her ears as Marie-Josèphe spoke.

“No horse can outdistance you,” Marie-Josèphe said. “No horse can even keep up with you. You are magnificent, and when I must return you, I’ll grieve, but I could never afford to keep you as Count Lucien can — as you deserve.”

As if she had summoned him by speaking his name, Count Lucien appeared from a side trail.

“If you continue this habit of speaking to animals, Mlle de la Croix,” Count Lucien said, “you’ll earn a reputation you won’t enjoy.”

Zelis stopped before Zachi; the two mares blew into each other’s nostrils.

Marie-Josèphe fantasied that they told each other what had happened, and Count Lucien understood them.

“A reputation as a witch might aid me now,” she said. “I beg your pardon, of course I didn’t mean that.”

“You’re missing His Majesty’s hunt.”

“As are you.”

“I took a brace of grouse; I don’t eat as much as some men.”

Marie-Josèphe’s outrage boiled over. “Those wretched boys!” she cried. “That wretched Lorraine!” Her hair hung wild around her face; her lace was ruined; her left arm ached fiercely. She bunched up her hair in her uninjured right hand; she dropped it; she fumbled at her torn cravat. She burst into tears of anger and frustration.

Humiliated, she turned away from Count Lucien.

“What you must think of me!” she said. “You see me only when I’m begging for your help, or crying like a child, or making a fool of myself —”

“Hardly that.” He rode closer. “Hold still.”

She shivered at his touch, thinking, wildly, Chartres pursued me but Chrétien caught me, they both believe I —

“I am a dangerous man, but you’ll never be in danger from me. Be easy.” Count Lucien’s voice gentled her.

He tied her hair back with his own ribbon, letting his chestnut perruke fall free around his shoulders.

“I liked Chartres,” Marie-Josèphe whispered. “A sweet boy — I thought! What did I do, to make him behave so?”

“He behaved so because he wished to, and because he can indulge his wishes,”

Count Lucien said. “It had nothing to do with you, except that you appeared in his sights like an antelope.”

Marie-Josèphe stroked Zachi’s shoulder. “But I escaped, because you surround me with afrits to watch me.”

“Zachi is only a horse,” Count Lucien said. “A remarkably swift horse, but only a horse, after all.”

He guided Zelis to Zachi’s left, where he straightened Marie-Josèphe’s cravat and arranged it like a steenkirk, fastening its end to her hunting jacket with his own diamond pin.

“I’ll be in the forefront of fashion,” Marie-Josèphe said.

“At its very zenith.”

Marie-Josèphe gathered the reins in her right hand. Swelling and waves of pain made her left hand useless. She nestled it in her lap.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You are flushed with fever.”

“With the wind. With escape —”

Count Lucien took her hand. She pulled away.

“Truly, nothing —”

“Be still!” Count Lucien said sharply. He exposed her wrist. His fair complexion paled to chalk white.

The red streaks had turned ugly purple. Dried blood stuck the bandage to her skin.

Her arm throbbed. She thought, Though he’s an officer, he doesn’t like the sight of blood.

“I’ll send to my lodge for M. de Baatz’ salve. It’s infallible for wounds and fever. It saved my life this summer.”

“I’m very grateful to you, sir.”

“Can you ride back, or shall I fetch a carriage?”

“I can ride.” She was ashamed to admit she feared being left alone. “I’m very strong, I never get sick.”

“Good. If you ride, no one will be tempted to send for Fagon.”

To avoid Dr. Fagon, Marie-Josèphe thought, I’d ride to the Atlantic — I’d ride the Silk Road to the Pacific. At the shore, Zachi will turn into a sea horse, the sea woman will magically meet us, and we’ll all swim to Martinique.

“M. de Chrétien,” she said, “I don’t have delusions.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“When I thought I saw Yves in the garden, bleeding — when I fled from the tiger that wasn’t there — it was the sea monster, as I thought she was then. It was the sea woman, showing me how to hear her. Teaching me to recount her stories.”

“Hard lessons.”

“Effective ones. As you heard —”

“Yes,” Count Lucien said. “It was extraordinary.”

They passed the trampled, bloody hunting meadow. Dogs growled over offal; servants gutted the catch and loaded it onto carts. Powder smoke thickened the air. The scent of blood and fear dizzied Marie-Josèphe. Her cheeks burned. She sought to distract herself from the fever, from the throbbing of her arm.

“May I ask you something, Count Lucien?”

“Certainly.”

“Madame said something I didn’t understand. She said, Ì wish Monsieur would love someone worthy of him.’ How can such a great princess consider herself unworthy?”

“You misunderstood her,” Count Lucien said. “She meant he loves Lorraine.”

“Lorraine?”

“Monsieur,” Count Lucien said carefully, “has been passionately attached to M. de Lorraine these many years.”

Marie-Josèphe considered. “Do you mean, like Achilleus and Patroklos?”

“Rather, like Alexander and Hephaestion.”

“I didn’t know...”

“It isn’t much spoken of, being so dangerous.”

“...anyone in the modern age was like Alexander. I thought passionate love between men was as mythical as centaurs — Did you say, dangerous?”

“Without His Majesty’s protection, Orléans and Lorraine might both be burned.”

“Burned! For love?”

“For sodomy.”

“What is sodomy?”

“Passionate love between men,” he said. “Or between women.”

She shook her head, confused.

“Physical love,” Count Lucien said. “Sex.”

“Between men?” Marie-Josèphe asked, amazed. “Between women!”

“Yes.”

“But why?” she exclaimed. She asked nothing about how, because she had little notion of the how, between a man and a woman, and she was not supposed to possess such knowledge.

“Because your Church forbids it.”

“I mean, why would they want to, without the promise of children —”

“For love. For passion. For pleasure.”

She laughed outright. “Oh, nonsense!”

“You’re laughing at me, Mlle de la Croix. Do you know more of sex than I do?”

“I know what the nuns told me.”

“They know nothing of sex at all.”

“They know it’s a sin, a plague upon the human race, a curse for women, a trial for men, to remind us of Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden.”

“That is the nonsense.”

“What have I said to make you so angry?”

“You? Nothing. But your teachers make me angry. They have corrupted your intelligence with lies.”

“Why would they lie?”

“That has always puzzled me,” Count Lucien said. “Perhaps you should ask Pope Innocent — but I doubt he’d tell you the truth either.”

“Will you?”

“If you wish.”

She hesitated. She had always sought the truth, in all other ways.

“I’ve always been told,” she said, “that modest young women should know nothing of intimate matters.”

“You’ve been told to restrict yourself in all manner of ways — your studies, your music, your intelligence —”

“I wish you to tell me!”

“The truth,” Count Lucien said. “Passionate love — sexual love — is the greatest pleasure one can experience. It dispels sadness. It banishes pain. It’s like the finest wine, like the morning of a day of perfect weather, like the most beautiful music, like riding free forever. And it’s like none of those things.”

Count Lucien’s voice — could it only be his voice? — made her pulse race with the excitement of danger and forbidden sins. Her arm throbbed, but at the same time a mysterious string of ecstasy tightened, its note rising toward the music of the spheres.