Vonda McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun

Mme de Maintenon and the other women of the royal family joined His Majesty. Marie-Josèphe surveyed Mademoiselle as she passed, criticizing herself. She had not dressed Lotte’s hair as beautifully as Odelette would have done.

A roar of greeting and affection rose from the crowd of visitors as soon as the King appeared. Lesser nobles, tradesmen and their wives, all those who presented themselves at the gate decently dressed, had the right to enter the chateau grounds and see their sovereign. The crowd parted for him, but pressed close as soon as he had passed. Marie-Josèphe pushed through the crush of bodies, trying to keep her place, trying not to feel afraid.

“Your Majesty, a boon to ask—”

“Please, Your Majesty, heal my son—”

The procession paused as the King accepted the petitions of his subjects and passed the letters to Count Lucien. He laid his hand on the swollen throat of a child, when the mother begged for a cure for the King’s Disease.

The crowded, echoing chapel was a relief after the crush of the courtyard. Marie-Josèphe took her place in the pew behind Madame’s. Hugging her shawl close, Madame kissed Marie-Josèphe’s cheek.

“Perhaps the new chapel will be warmer,” Madame said, but her tone was not very hopeful.

Marie-Josèphe had to smother a giggle. References to Hell freezing over often accompanied speculations about the new chapel’s eventual completion. She wondered if hell, frozen, would be warmer than the old chapel. She wished she could tell Madame the joke. In her own way, Madame was very pious, but she loved God rather than the rituals and ceremonies of the church. She had been a heretic, a Protestant, in her youth; court gossips claimed her conversion was a fraud, entered into only to allow her to marry Monsieur.

Marie-Josèphe thought she might tell Count Lucien the joke, but Count Lucien was nowhere to be seen.

Yves joined Marie-Josèphe. She squeezed his arm fondly.

“Aren’t you glad you attended His Majesty this morning? Was it wonderful, in his room? I wish I—”

“Shh,” he said gently.

The choir’s voices, as one, rose to the frescoed ceiling. Marie-Josèphe shivered at the pure beauty of the singing.

Splendid new cloths draped the altar, and a thousand new wax candles burned in silver candelabra. Marie-Josèphe admired the altar, then turned with the rest of His Majesty’s court to face the back of the chapel.

“What are you doing?” Yves whispered, horrified. He faced the altar, with a foolish expression of confusion.

Marie-Josèphe tugged at his sleeve. “I should have explained,” she whispered. At Mass, His Majesty’s court always faced him, while he faced the altar and the priest.

Yves resisted her, but yielded to the combined stares of Madame and the princes of the blood royal. He turned around.

Above, His Majesty arrived in his balcony at the rear of the chapel.

The King gazed down at his court, who worshipped him to worship God. With a gesture of elegant magnanimity, he directed them toward the altar. Obediently, respectfully, they all turned again, as His Holiness Pope Innocent XII came to the altar to conduct Mass.

The coolness of the chateau gave way to the warmth of the terrace above the gardens. The sun had already sped halfway to noon. It’s warm today! Marie-Josèphe thought gratefully.

Potted flowers traced the verges of the pathways; the blossoms of a thousand orange trees perfumed the air. Bees bumbled softly through the flower-embroidery.

The fountain mechanisms creaked and groaned, shivering the quiet into pieces. The fountains all burst into sprays and streams: Latona and Poseidon, Neptune, the dragons. Usually the fountains played only for His Majesty, but they would play continuously until after Carrousel.

People filled the gardens, flowing down the Green Carpet and pooling around the Fountain of Apollo and the sea monster’s tent. They carried Marie-Josèphe like a stream, as if she were lighter than air.

The poor sea monster will be so hungry, Marie-Josèphe thought, I did hope to feed her as soon as the servant brought the fish. But perhaps it’s just as well. I induced her to eat from my hand… Marie-Josèphe rubbed her sore wrist and thought, apprehensively, If she’s very hungry, perhaps I can induce her to obey me.

Marie-Josèphe slipped past and between groups of visitors—mothers and fathers and children, elderly grandparents, two and three and even four generations marvelling at the magnificence of their King’s home and the perfection of his gardens. Strolling through the soft, warm afternoon in their best clothes, husbands wearing rented swords, wives defying the sumptuary laws with daring silver lace at sleeve or petticoat, the children in leading-strings and ribbons, the townspeople of Versailles and Paris and every town in France hoped for a glimpse of Louis le Grand.

The rolled-up towel chafed Marie-Josèphe’s legs.

Do I dare take the nuisance off until tomorrow? Marie-Josèphe wondered. Uncomfortable business! Another of God’s jokes, at which you can laugh only if you aren’t the subject.

At the convent, her confessor had been shocked when she asked about God’s jokes. God performed miracles, and He meted out punishment—such as women’s monthlies—but He did not play jokes.

How sad, Marie-Josèphe thought, to be omnipotent, to be immortal, to possess no sense of humor.

At the bottom of the slope, people shouted and clustered closer around the sea monster’s tent. Marie-Josèphe snatched her skirt above her ankles and broke into a run, afraid something had happened to the creature.

“Wait your turn!” snarled a man in broadcloth and homespun as Marie-Josèphe tried to slip past him.

“Papa, papa, I want the sea monster!” His young son pulled at his coattail. “Papa, papa!” The three other boys, all so young they were still in dresses, joined the cry. Their mother hushed her brood, without effect.

The tradesman turned; Marie-Josèphe could not be sure if he intended to slapher or the child who had started the appeal.

“Sir!”

Her velvet and lace protected her; she stood out in the crowd of visitors as a member of His Majesty’s court.

“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle.” He stepped away, pulling his wife and the four young children with him. They vanished into the crowd, the eldest child still begging for the sea monster.

“Guard!” Marie-Josèphe called.

After a moment, one of the musketeers opened a way for her and led her through the crowd and into the open tent.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Why have you let everyone in?”

“His Majesty ordered it,” the musketeer said. “His Majesty’s subjects are to be allowed to see the monster.” The musketeers let the visitors file in through one open side of the tent They looked at yesterday’s sketches—not those from the secret dissection, which she had left safe in the chateau—and peered through the bars of the cage and exited through a second raised section of the tent wall.

The water lay as still as glass.

The musketeer ushered Marie-Josèphe through the gate of the cage to the edge of the fountain.

“There’s nothing in the fountain but Apollo,” one of the visitors said.

“We cannot make the creature show itself,” the musketeer replied.

“Shoot at it, that will bring it out.”

“She’s frightened,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Wouldn’t you be, if a thousand people clustered around your bed?”

“It doesn’t bother His Majesty,” said the musketeer.

“The sea monster is a wild creature.”