“I will look, Your Majesty.” Yves took up his heaviest lancet. “Are you ready, sister?”
Marie-Josèphe settled a fresh sheet of paper.
Yves sliced open the creature’s belly, exposing its viscera. The intestines and stomach lay flat and shrivelled, empty of food. Perhaps the male sea monster had successfully resisted being force fed. Marie-Josèphe regretted the creature’s death, but she was glad the organs would not explode upon His Majesty and His Holiness when Yves pierced them.
“The intestines are rather short for a creature that must sustain itself mostly on seaweed, with an occasional garnish of fish,” Yves said, “by which I surmise that seaweed is easily digested.”
He cut the intestines out delicately, measuring and inspecting, taking small samples, placing the organs in jars of spirits. Marie-Josèphe drew as best she could in lantern light. The sea monster’s intestine sported an appendix, unusual in most animals. Yves dissected out the kidneys, the pancreas, the bladder; he even sought stomach-stones and kidney-stones. He found nothing unusual or notable in the lower abdomen. He might have been dissecting any carcass, or even the corpse of a man.
His Majesty watched with increasing impatience; His Holiness with increasing discomfort. Count Lucien watched unmoved.
With a heavy pair of shears, Yves cut open the ribs at the breastbone. He separated the rib cage, exposing the lungs and the heart.
“It is as I thought,” Yves said. He probed delicately into the chest, moving aside lobes of the lungs to expose the heart and the various glands. “The creature presents no attributes of the fish, neither gills nor swim-bladder. It is very like the dugong. And as you have seen, Your Majesty, the sea monster possesses internal organs normal to all mammals.”
“Father de la Croix, whether the monster is a fish or a beast is of no interest to me. What is of interest is its organ of immortality.”
“I’ve found no evidence of such an organ, Sire. Immortality, like the transmutation of gold, is the province of alchemy, abhorred by the Church and by natural philosophy.”
“You dismiss ancient tales cavalierly, Father de la Croix,” His Majesty said. “How did you come to accept this undertaking, if you believe my quest futile?”
“I wished to please Your Majesty,” Yves said, taken aback by the King’s sharp tone. “The quest for the sea monsters was anything but futile. As for the organ of immortality, it exists, or it does not exist. My beliefs are immaterial.”
Pope Innocent stared at him, exhaustion transformed by outrage.
“That is to say, I might form a hypothesis, but it must be tested...” Yves’ voice trailed off. His quest for knowledge had for an instant overcome his restraint; he was doing himself no credit with Pope Innocent.
“If you believe the organ does not exist,” His Majesty said, ignoring Yves’ embarrassment, “you surely will not find it.”
“If the monsters impart everlasting life to those who consume them, Sire,” Yves said, “why, how many sailors would be a thousand years old?”
Louis waved away the objections. “Sailors live a hard life. Protection against old age and disease would never save a man from accident or drowning.”
“Cousin,” Innocent said, “perhaps your natural philosopher has the right of it. God drove us from Eden, after all, where we were immortal. Now we are mortal, but we live in the hopes of joining Him in everlasting life.”
“If God created an immortality organ, and commanded us to use beasts as we will — then it is His will that we become immortal.”
Innocent frowned thoughtfully, troubled. “Earthly immortality would be a burden, not a satisfaction.” He hesitated. “Yet, if one were called to continue God’s work —”
“As I am,” His Majesty said.
“— one would submit... however burdened by Earthly flesh.”
Yves continued his exploration of the heart and the lungs. At the top of the chest, beneath the upper ribs, the highest lobe of the lung resisted his probe. He exclaimed wordlessly and pulled the lobe farther into view.
“This is unique.”
Marie-Josèphe glanced from the gutted sea monster to her brother, to Innocent, to His Majesty. All of them stared at the unusual lobe of the lung. The color differed, and the texture. A tangle of blood vessels covered its surface.
Only Count Lucien paid no attention to the carcass. He paid his attention to the King, gazing at his sovereign with hope, and relief, and love.
Yves lifted the unusual structure and cut it free of the normal lung.
“You have found it,” Louis said. “What else could it be?”
Marie-Josèphe hurried up the Green Carpet after Yves, holding her drawing box tight against her chest, protecting the record of her brother’s discoveries. Yves strode along before her. Far ahead, His Majesty’s deaf-mutes pushed his rolling cart at a run, and Pope Innocent’s chair carriers struggled to keep up. Count Lucien’s elegant grey Arabian trotted beside them. Early mist swirled at their heels. Yves might keep up with them, but Marie-Josèphe never could. She broke into a run, glad she was not wearing court dress. Ten paces ahead, Yves paused and waited impatiently. Torches gilded the chateau, cast shadows across the gardens, and haloedYves’ hair.
“Hurry, or we’ll get no sleep at all — you do want me to attend His Majesty’s awakening?” He smiled, teasing her.
She looked at the ground, embarrassed all over again for failing him yesterday.
They climbed the back stairs to the attic and their tiny apartment. As they ascended, a young courtier muffled in cloak and half-mask passed, creeping quietly down. He ignored their salute, as if the mask made him invisible.
Yawning and stretching, Yves disappeared into his bedroom to nap for a few hours.
Odelette and Hercules slept soundly in Marie-Josèphe’s bed, cuddled together, warm and safe. Marie-Josèphe put aside the temptation to join them in their comfortable nest.
If I fall asleep now, she thought, I shall never wake in time to rouse Yves. Besides, I’ve not done a moment’s work on the dissection sketches.
In Yves’ dressing room, she lit tallow candles and settled herself at the table to begin the painstaking task of redrawing the sketches with pen and ink. As she arranged the papers, she found the equation she had scribbled and scratched out. Her thoughts wandered to the problems that fascinated her, the description of God’s creations — God’s will, perhaps — in precise terms. She wrote a second equation for predicting the motion of rustling leaves; she saw that it would not work, either, even when she added the effect of gravity.