“Very well,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I promise. From now on, no matter what, I’ll finish the story.”
“Tell another!” the visitors shouted. “Yes, another story!”
A servant pushed through the crowd, hurrying to Count Lucien, handing him a note. The count read it, then tramped to the area between the cage and the line of applauding visitors. His limp had nearly gone.
“Guests of His Majesty,” he said. His pleasant voice, barely raised, filled the tent. The visitors fell silent, respectful of the King’s representative. “His Majesty asks that you leave the sea monster for today.”
Without objection, without complaint, the visitors filed out. The men bowed to Count Lucien; the women curtsied. Even the little ones, delighted to face an adult at their own level, offered him childish salutes, which he returned as graciously as he recognized their parents.
The sea woman surfaced, making a rude sound, spraying water. She asked Marie-Josèphe where all the people of land were going, and what she was to do for amusement.
Marie-Josèphe leaned over the top stair. “Count Lucien! Count Lucien, you were right,” she said. “She’d rather play, and tease the visitors — I was wrong to ask you to send them away.”
“I didn’t send them away to please you, Mlle de la Croix,” Count Lucien said.
“Of course you wouldn’t send them away to please me.” Bone-weariness caught her. She sank onto the lowest step. “I’d never think such a thing.” The musketeers lowered the sides of the tent, closing in the silence.
Count Lucien climbed onto the rim of the fountain. “Are you quite all right, Mlle de la Croix?”
“Yes, sir.” And yet she did not move.
Count Lucien handed her his flask. She drank the pungent calvados gratefully.
The sea woman glided to her and hovered at her feet, one webbed hand on each of Marie-Josèphe’s ankles. The sea woman poked and prodded with her sharp nails, exploring Marie-Josèphe’s shoes, her stockings, singing to ask, what is this strange second skin grown by the people of land?
The spirits drove back Marie-Josèphe’s exhaustion. She rolled down her stocking so the sea woman could touch her skin. The sea woman’s swimming webs were as smooth and fine as China silk. She stroked Marie-Josèphe’s leg, probing her shoe. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her face turned toward Marie-Josèphe’s foot though her eyelids drooped shut. She sank into the water, drawing Marie-Josèphe’s foot with her, to look at it with her voice.
“Wait, sea woman! I cannot afford to ruin these shoes.” Marie-Josèphe bared her foot. “Now you may look at my feet however you like.”
The cold fountain water rose above Marie-Josèphe’s ankle. The sea woman submerged. Her voice tickled Marie-Josèphe’s toes.
Marie-Josèphe giggled. “May I look at your foot?”
Without lifting her head or body from the water, the sea woman slid one foot over the edge of the platform. Her hips and knees were far more limber than the joints of a land human. Marie-Josèphe stroked the sea woman’s instep, and the sea woman wriggled her clawed toes. Warmth radiated from the rough skin of her legs.
“Mlle de la Croix, I believe you’ve had enough calvados.” Count Lucien retrieved his flask. “The scholars of the Academy of Sciences will not like to see you unclad.”
“The Academy!” Marie-Josèphe exclaimed. Yves had said not a word about the honor. She snatched her foot from the sea woman’s hands, startling her so she surfaced, snorting.
Marie-Josèphe saw an opportunity, but she had no time to plan. She sang the sea woman’s name.
“Sea woman, dive, breathe underwater. If you value your life, don’t come up until I beg you to return.”
The sea woman whistled in distress, kicked hard, and dove backward in a long graceful curve. Bubbles rushed from her mouth and nose. She breathed out the last of her air and lay on the bottom of the pool, quiet as death.
Outside the tent, footsteps crunched on gravel.
Marie-Josèphe scooped up her shoe and stocking and ran to the laboratory, her left shoe tapping on the planks, her bare right foot silent. She reached her place by the dissection table just in time to conceal her bare foot and her shoe and stocking beneath her skirt.
Footmen ceremoniously positioned the King’s portrait. Yves entered the tent, leading a half-dozen dark-clad scholars and their students. He barely nodded to Marie-Josèphe. The scholars bowed to the portrait and to Count Lucien; they gathered around the dissection table. Count Lucien’s groom brought a step-stool for him to stand on.
Yves uncovered the body of the sea woman’s friend and spoke expansively, in Latin, before the King’s philosophers. “Natural philosophy proves the sea monsters are natural creatures, albeit ugly ones, like dugongs and sea-cows.”
He had saved an arm to dissect for the gentlemen of the Academy. He cut it, exposing sinews, bones, joints.
In the silence of the sea woman’s languor, Marie-Josèphe documented the work. She drew with difficulty. Now that she knew the truth she saw the human features of the dead man. The long fine bones of his fingers reminded her of Count Lucien’s beautiful hands.
Yves put down his knife. Marie-Josèphe laid down her charcoal and flexed her cramped hand. A student displayed her final drawing.
The gentlemen of the Academy questioned Yves about his hunt, his work, the King’s patronage.
“The creatures have large lungs, as one would expect, similar to those of the slower sea mammals. I’ve observed one to remain underwater for ten or twelve minutes.” He moved quickly to the body’s other organs. “The heart —”
He never mentioned the anomalous lobe of the lung.
“Nothing remains to be learned from the monster’s carcass,” Yves said. “I shall of course compare female to male, inasmuch as the female’s fate allows, though we gain little knowledge from the imperfect female copy of any creature.”
“Remarkable work, M. de la Croix,” said the senior scholar, also speaking Latin. “Let us observe the living sea monster for a moment, if you please.”
“Call the sea monster, sister.” Yves left off speaking Latin, as if he had no idea Marie-Josèphe understood it.
Hurrying ahead, a little awkward with one bare foot, Marie-Josèphe entered the cage. She locked the door, put the key into her pocket, and sat composed on the fountain’s rim with her hands folded in her lap.