Vonda McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun

“No, he isn’t.” Then she understood: Domenico was jealous. “He is selfish and mean—who would want him?”

“ I’m not selfish, and I’m not mean—”

“Of course you aren’t!”

“—and even though I love you, your cantata is wonderful! Your other songs were very pretty, but—”

“—I hadn’t practiced or played or composed a song in many years. I wasn’t allowed.”

“That is horrible,” he whispered.

“It was,” she said.

“How will you ever catch up?”

“I never will, Démonico,” she said, “but that time’s past, stolen, and I must stop feeling sorry about it. The sea woman gave me this music as her gift, it’s entirely to her credit if it has any quality.” She wondered if it did have any quality, if Domenico saw excellence in it because he loved her. She wondered whether her unpracticed talents had debased the song of the sea woman’s life.

M. Coupillet strode into the practice room, followed by a group of sunburned string players wiping their brows, blinking in the dim room, and calling for wine and beer.

Démonico leaned closer, conspiratorially. “M. Coupillet said you’d never finish. He said you couldn’t.”

“Did he!” she exclaimed, then relented. “After all, he was nearly right.”

Domenico bent over the keyboard as if he had never paused in his practice. He played Marie-Josèphe’s cantata.

“The varnish on my viola melted, I swear to God,” said one of the younger musicians. “Next time I have to follow the King around the garden in the sun without a hat, I’ll use my oldest instrument.”

“Michel wants to put a hat on his viola,” said another of the musicians, laughing.

“I’ll use my newest strings,” said a third musician, looking ruefully at the broken string on his violin.

“Your broken string was the fault of that plump little princess,” said Michel. “Under those silver petticoats, I’ll wager she’s bleeding like—”

M. Coupillet stamped his director’s baton on the floor. “Enough, Michel. You’ve blasphemed, insulted the King, and spoken lewdly, all in the space of a minute. And in front of M. Scarlatti’s little arithmetic teacher.”

“I beg your pardon, mamselle.” Michel the viola player bowed to her and turned his attention to a cup of wine and a slice of bread and cheese.

“What do you want, Mlle de la Croix?” M. Coupillet asked. “Why are you here? To beg relief from composing His Majesty’s cantata?”

“It’s finished,” she said. She could hardly listen to him, because she was listening to Domenico. When he played, the music sounded as she imagined it.

M. Coupillet waited. When she neither replied nor gave him the music, he thumped his baton on the floor again, startling her, snatching her attention back.

“You must give me the score,” he said.

“But Domenico is—” She stopped, amazed. The score lay on the seat beside Domenico; he played from memory.

Marie-Josèphe reluctantly gave M. Coupillet the pages. He weighed them in his hand; he riffled through them.

“What is this? An opera? Do you think you’re Mlle de la Guerre? You—an amateur, a woman!—you give me an opera to conduct? Worthless! Hopeless!” He tried to tear the sheaf in half, but it was too thick; his hand slipped and he ripped only the first half-dozen pages. He wrenched it with both hands, like a dog shaking a rat, and flung the whole thing down. The score spilled across the polished parquet.

“Sir!” She stooped to gather the torn, rumpled sheets.

“Incompetence! It’s dreadful.” He waved his baton toward Domenico. “You think to match yourself against genius such as Signor Alessandro Scarlatti!”

Domenico’s shoulders shook from laughter, but his hands never faltered, playing the piece M. Coupillet took for his father’s.

“Signor Scarlatti admired it!”

“What do you expect? He’s Italian —Signor Alessandro admires your white bosom, your—”

“You insult me on every level, sir!” She tried to leave, but M. Coupillet barred her way.

“His Majesty asked you for a song—a few minutes of music!” M. Coupillet said. “ You insult me—you insult him —with this, this bloated abortion.” He emphasized his words by thumping his baton. “You charmed him with your coquettish ways, but your charm won’t distract him from your arrogant failure.”

“You’re unfair, sir.”

“Am I? I should have had this commission—He never would have noticed you if not for my embellishments—”

“Little Domenico’s embellishments, if you please, M. Coupillet. It’s contemptible enough for you to steal my accomplishments, but to steal a child’s—”

“A child? A child!” He shook his baton toward Domenico. “I have it on good authority, the boy’s a midget of thirty years!”

“I’m six!” Domenico shouted, and kept on playing.

Marie-Josèphe burst out laughing, but her sense of the absurd only infuriated M. Coupillet the more.

“Do you dare to laugh at me? Am I insufficiently grand? I, who brought you to His Majesty’s attention?”

“Through no desire of your own, sir!”

“Desire? How dare you mention desire? You flirt with the Neapolitan, you flirt with the King, you even flirt with dwarves and sodomites, but you ignore and despise me—”

“Good-bye, sir.”

Still he would not let her pass.

“Do you imagine I noticed you for your music? For your amateurish compositions and your fumble-fingered playing? I do not say you would not have been adequate—adequate, no more—if you’d devoted yourself to the art, but you’ve wasted whatever talent you ever had, and it’s just as well! Women play by rote! Women play as if they were still in the schoolroom! And as for the compositions of women—Women should be silent! Women are good for only one thing, and you’re such a fool you don’t even know what it is.”

A fleck of spittle, foaming, collected at the corner of his mouth. He loomed over her, shouting.

She clutched the untidy pile of paper. “Let me pass.” She meant her voice to freeze him, but her words revealed her vulnerability. Across the room, the young musicians stood in uncomfortable silence, their backs turned, as afraid as Marie-Josèphe of their master.

“Give me the score,” he said. “I’ll condescend to carve a song out of it, but you must show me some gratitude—and His Majesty must know the credit is mine.”

“No, sir. I won’t insult His Majesty with my inferior female music.”

Coupillet moved aside. His bow was a taunt, an insult.

“Do you wish to go? Yes, go! You’ll fail without my help. I’ll explain to His Majesty how you neglected his commission!”

Marie-Josèphe rode Zachi toward the Fountain of Apollo, holding tight to her drawing box and the score inside it. She dared not return to the musicians’ room. Perhaps she could find Domenico when he had finished his practice.

Do I have reason to find him? she wondered. He’s only a little boy, prodigy or not, how can he judge the music? Besides, M. Coupillet will surely forbid him to play it. I should have let M. Coupillet pick out a few measures, and then I wouldn’t be utterly humiliated in front of the King.

In truth, she could not bear the thought of letting M. Coupillet alter the sea woman’s music.

In the Fountain of Apollo, the sea woman sang and leaped for the entertainment of the visitors. Marie-Josèphe put aside all her own worries and humiliations. They were trivial compared to the sea woman’s peril.

She pushed through the crowd to the cage, where a bright flock of noblewomen sat watching the sea woman. Mme Lucifer smoked a small black cigar and whispered to Mlle d’Armagnac, whose hair was hidden beneath an iridescent headdress of peacock feathers.