Vonda McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun

“I have done,” he said. “Tonight, I forgot my billiard cue.” In a voice as dry as the Arabian desert, he added, “The one with the curve.”

He sketched the long curve in the air, the shape of a stick that would allow him to reach the table.

Marie-Josèphe’s face flushed. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I am so sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“Mlle de la Croix.”

She fell silent.

“Mlle de la Croix, it was years ago that I noticed I’m a dwarf. It’s common knowledge. You needn’t be embarrassed to notice it yourself.”

She had feared she had offended him once more; now she feared he would laugh at her. He took another sip of wine, savoring it, gazing up at her over the rim of his silver cup, never gulping it as Chartres did. He stood quite steady. Only the deliberation of his movements revealed the effect of the wine. His heavy sapphire ring glowed against the silver of his goblet.

“May I draw you?” Marie-Josèphe asked.

“For a gallery of oddities? Shall my likeness hang among ape-men and sea monsters?”

“No! Oh, no! Your face is beautiful. Your hands are beautiful. I would like to draw you.”

Count Lucien drank the last drops of wine; a footman appeared from nowhere to take away his goblet. The count waved away another glass.

He will refuse me, Marie-Josèphe thought, and once again I’ve said the wrong thing.

“Your time is otherwise engaged,” Count Lucien said. “And His Majesty’s bedtime ceremony occupies mine.”

Lucien bowed to Mlle de la Croix and limped away.

Sieur de Baatz’ salve will soothe the wound, Lucien thought. Exercise will loosen my joints and ease the ache of my back.

The Marquise de la Fère caught his gaze as he passed; he paused to kiss her hand. Speaking to him alone, she was not so self-conscious of her marred complexion.

“My carriage waits on your pleasure, my dear Juliette,” he said.

“And yours.”

“I must ride Zelis home,” he said. “I’ll follow when we’ve put His Majesty to bed.”

“Your groom can ride—But I forget, no one rides your favorite desert horses but you.”

“My groom could lead Zelis home, but I’ve stood in Diana’s Salon all evening. My groom cannot shake the kinks out of me.”

She smiled at him, her vast brown eyes limpid in candlelight.

“Of course not, my dear,” she said. “That’s my task.” She fluttered her fan and her eyelashes elaborately, mocking coquettes. He laughed, kissed her hand again, and joined the group of nobles who would see His Majesty comfortably put to bed.

Yves wrenched his attention back to Mme de Chartres, wondering how anyone so young and of such questionable birth could be so arrogant. She demanded more royal prerogatives than the legitimate members of the royal family. His Majesty was good manners incarnate, the grand dauphin became invisible in his self-deprecation, and His Majesty’s grandsons behaved like any little boys, only better dressed.

“You brought me bad luck tonight, Father de la Croix, and I demand that you make amends for it.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck, Mme de Chartres,” he said. “Or in any kind of luck at all.”

“You stood with me at the card table, and I lost—so I place my losses at your feet.”

“Would you place your winnings at my feet, if you had won?” he asked.

She closed her Chinese sandalwood fan; she stared at him with a straightforward gaze. Golden Chinese ornaments glittered and dangled in her hair, their pendants touching delicately, ringing faintly.

“Why, Father de la Croix, I would place anything you asked at your feet—if you only would ask.”

She behaved as if he were flirting, though he had meant the question in the most straightforward way. He had been among men, sailors or other Jesuits or university students, for so long that he had forgotten what little he had ever known about polite conversation in the society of women. Mme de Chartres gave a second meaning to his every courtly compliment.

Despite the honors His Majesty had shown him this evening, despite the admiration of the courtiers and the attention of the beautiful women—he could appreciate their beauty, could he not, for God had created it, after all—Yves wished he were back in his room. He had notes to write up from the sea monster dissection. He must be sure Marie-Josèphe did not neglect the sketches. And he must get some sleep, during the dark hours, so he could use the hours of daylight to complete his study of the carcass.

The Master of Ceremonies strode into the room, clearing the way for His Majesty. Mme de Chartres drew aside, falling into a deep curtsy. Yves bowed, surreptitiously watching His Majesty pass.

Am I meant to watch His Majesty’s bedtime as well as his rising? Yves thought. He shrugged off the sudden apprehension, for M. de Chrétien would have told him of the added duty. His Majesty passed, with King James at his left and His Holiness on his right hand, Count Lucien in the King’s wake with the other noblemen. His Holiness glanced at Yves, his brow furrowed; Count Lucien passed him without word or gesture.

The King’s presence had filled the state apartments. Now the rooms felt empty, and in a moment they would be dark, for the courtiers left behind now hurried away, yawning and complaining of the lateness, the tedium. The servants of His Majesty’s gentlemen swarmed into the apartments, snuffing out the candles before they could burn one hairsbreadth shorter.

“Come with me,” Mme de Chartres said.

“I’m honored to escort you to your husband,” Yves said.

“My husband! What would I want with my husband!” She laughed at him and swept away, calling back over her shoulder without caring if anyone heard, “You disappoint me, Father de la Croix.”

Yves knew what she desired. He was not a virgin, not quite, a circumstance he regretted, but since taking orders he had never broken his vow of celibacy. Mme de Chartres’ eagerness to break her marriage vows disturbed him past any threat of temptation.

He was alone for the first time during the entire interminable evening. He had told the story of the sea monster’s capture two dozen times, the story of the sailor’s unspilt wine almost as often. Few of His Majesty’s nobles had ever been to sea. They expected a wealth of adventures, exciting stories, not the truth of discomfort, boredom to equal anything they complained about at Versailles, and hours or days or weeks of terror and misery when the seas turned ugly.

Yves walked through the dark apartments, abandoned by anyone of any importance. As the gentlemen’s servants collected the burned candles for their masters, His Majesty’s servants replaced them with fresh tapers. No candle could be lit a second time for the King. Attending His Majesty for one single quarter of a year, the usual term, could light one’s house until the seasons turned. This was one of the considerable perquisites for the courtiers who attended the Sun King.

Yves descended the magnificent Staircase of the Ambassadors, for he could not reach his tiny rooms in the chateau’s attic except by returning to the ground floor and climbing a narrow staircase. A figure in blazing red appeared from the darkness.

“Father de la Croix.”

“Your eminence.” Yves bowed to Cardinal Ottoboni.

“The Holy Father requires your presence,” the cardinal said, in Latin.

Yves replied in the same language. “I am at His Holiness’ service.”

Cardinal Ottoboni swept out onto the terrace. He pointed into the garden. His Holiness stood between the parterres d’eau, gazing along the length of the garden toward the peak of the sea monster’s tent.

“Attend me, Father de la Croix,” His Holiness said.