A specimen for dissection, Marie-Josèphe thought. My clever brother caught one sea monster for the King, and took another for himself.
“Yves, come ride with me,” Marie-Josèphe said.
“It’s impossible.” He climbed into the first wagon. “I can’t leave the creature.”
Disappointed, Marie-Josèphe crossed the quay to the plain coach. The footman opened the door. Count Lucien courteously reached up to her, to help her in. The strength of his hand surprised her. Instead of being short, as she had expected, his fingers were disproportionately long. He wore soft deerskin gloves. She wondered if he would permit her to draw his hands.
She wondered why he had stayed behind. She felt nervous about talking to him, for he was important and she was not. And, truth to tell, she wondered whether to stoop to his height or stand straight and look down at him. She resolved the question by climbing into the coach.
“Thank you, M. de Chrétien,” she said.
“You’re welcome, Mlle de la Croix.”
“Did you see the sea monster?”
“I am not much interested in grotesques, Mlle de la Croix. Pardon me, I cannot linger.”
The heat of embarrassment crept up Marie-Josèphe’s face. She had insulted Count Lucien without meaning to, and she suspected he had insulted her in return.
The count spoke a word to his grey Arabian. The horse bowed on one knee. Count Lucien clambered into the saddle. The horse lurched to its feet, clumsy for an instant. Carrying its tail like a banner, the Arabian sprang into a gallop to take Count Lucien after his sovereign.
2
Sunset spread its light across the park of the chateau of Versailles. The moon, waxing gibbous, approached its zenith. Heading for their stables, the coach horses gained their second wind and plunged through the forest along the hard-packed dirt road.
Marie-Josèphe leaned her head against the side of the coach. She wished she had gone with Madame, in Monsieur’s crowded carriage. Madame would have all manner of amusing comments about today’s journey. Monsieur and Lorraine would engage in their friendly barbed banter. Chartres might ride beside the carriage and tell Marie-Josèphe about his latest experiment in chemistry, for she was surely the only woman and perhaps the only other person at court who understood what he was talking about. Certainly his wife neither understood nor cared. The Duchess de Chartres did exactly as she pleased. It had not pleased her to come from the Palais Royale in Paris to join His Majesty’s — her father’s — procession.
If Chartres spoke to Marie-Josèphe then the duke du Maine might, too. And then the King’s grandson Bourgogne and his little brothers would demand their share of paying attention to Marie-Josèphe.
Maine, like Chartres, was married; Bourgogne was barely a youth, and his brothers were children. Besides, they were all unimaginably above Marie-Josèphe’s station. Their attention to her could come to nothing.
Nevertheless, Marie-Josèphe enjoyed it.
Bored and lonely and restless, Marie-Josèphe gazed out into the trees. This far from His Majesty’s residence, the woods grew unconfined. Fallen branches thrust up through underbrush. The fragile swords of ferns drooped into the roadway. Sunset streaked the world with dusty red-gold rays. If she were riding alone she could stop and listen to the forest, to the twilight burst of bird song, to the soft dance of bat wings. Instead, her coach drove into the dusk, its driver and its attendants and even her brother all unaware of the music.
The underbrush disappeared; the trees grew farther apart; no branches littered the ground. Hunters could ride headlong through this tame groomed forest. Marie-Josèphe imagined riding along a brushstroke of trail, following the King in pursuit of a deer.
A scream of rage and challenge filled the twilit forest. Marie-Josèphe clutched the door and the edge of her seat. The horses shied and snorted and leaped forward. The carriage lurched. The exhausted animals tried to outrun the terrible noise. The driver shouted and dragged his team into his control.
The scream of the tiger in His Majesty’s menagerie awoke and aroused all the other exotic animals. The elephant trumpeted. The lion coughed and roared. The aurochs bellowed.
The sea monster sang a challenge.
The wild eerie melody quickened Marie-Josèphe’s heart. The shrieking warble was as raw, as erotic, as passionate, as the singing of eagles. The tame forests of Versailles hid the same shadows as the wildest places of Martinique.
The sea monster cried again. The Menagerie fell silent. The sea monster’s song vanished in a whisper.
The carriage rumbled around the arm of the Grand Canal. The canal shimmered with ghostly fog; wavelets lapped against the sides of His Majesty’s fleet of miniature ships. Wheels crunched on the gravel of the Queen’s Road; the baggage wagons turned down the Queen’s Road toward the Fountain of Apollo. Marie-Josèphe’s coach continued toward the chateau of Versailles and its formal gardens.
“Driver!”
“Whoa!”
Marie-Josèphe leaned out the window. The heavy, hot breath of tired horses filled the night. The gardens lay quiet and strange, the fountains still.
“Follow my brother, if you please.”
“But, mamselle —”
“And then you are dismissed for the evening.”
“Yes, mamselle!” He wheeled the horses around.
Yves hurried from one wagon to the other, trying to direct two groups of workers at once.
“You men — take this basin — it’s heavy. Stop — you — don’t touch the ice!”
Marie-Josèphe opened the carriage door. By the time the footman had climbed wearily down to help her, she was running toward the baggage wagons.
An enormous tent covered the Fountain of Apollo. Candlelight flickered inside, illuminating the silk walls. The tent glowed, an immense lantern.
Rows of candles softly lit the way up the hill to the chateau, tracing the edges of le tapis vert, the Green Carpet. The expanse of perfect lawn split the gardens from Apollo’s Fountain to Latona’s, flanked by gravel paths and marble statues of gods and heroes.
Marie-Josèphe held her skirts above the gravel and hurried to the baggage wagons. The sea monster’s basin and the shroud in the ice divided Yves’ attention.
“Marie-Josèphe, don’t let them move the specimen till I get back.” Yves tossed his command over his shoulder as if he had never left Martinique to become a Jesuit, as if she were still keeping his house and assisting in his experiments.