Vonda McIntyre - The Moon and the Sun

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.

Yves hurried to the tent. Embroidered on the silken curtains, the gold sunburst of the King gazed out impassively. Two musketeers drew the curtains aside.

“Move the ice carefully,” Marie-Josèphe said to the workers. “Uncover the bundle.”

“But the Father said—”

“And now I say.”

Still the workers hesitated.

“My brother might forget about this specimen till morning,” Marie-Josèphe said. “You might wait for him all night.”

In nervous silence they obeyed her, uncovering the shroud with their hands. Shards of chopped ice scattered over the ground. Marie-Josèphe took care that the workers caused no damage. She had helped Yves with his work since she was a little girl and he a boy of twelve, both of them learning Greek and Latin, reading Herodotus—credulous old man!—and Galen, and studying Newton. Yves of course always got first choice of the books, but he never objected when she made off with the Principia , or slept with it beneath her pillow. She grieved for the loss of M. Newton’s book, yearned for another copy, and wondered what he had discovered about light, the planets, and gravity during the past five years.

The workmen lifted the shrouded figure. Ice scattered onto the path. Marie-Josèphe followed the workmen into the tent. She was anxious to get a clear view of a sea monster, either one that was living or one that was dead.

The enormous tent covered the Fountain of Apollo and a surrounding circle of dry land. Beneath the tent, an iron cage enclosed the fountain. Inside the new cage, Apollo and his golden chariot and the four horses of the sun rose from the water, bringing dawn, heralded by dolphins, by tritons blowing trumpets.

Marie-Josèphe thought, Apollo is galloping west to east, in opposition to the sun.

Three shallow, wide wooden stairs led from the pool’s low stone rim to a wooden platform at water’s level. The tent, the cage, and the stairs and platform had been built for Yves’ convenience, though they spoiled the view of the Dawn Chariot.

Outside the cage, laboratory equipment stood upon a sturdy floor of polished planks. Two armchairs, several armless chairs, and a row of ottomans faced the laboratory.

“You may put the specimen on the table,” Marie-Josèphe said to the workers. They did as she directed, grateful to be free of the burden and its sharp odors.

Tall and spare in his long black cassock, Yves stood in the entrance of the cage. His workers wrestled the basin onto the fountain’s rim.

“Don’t drop it—lay it down—careful!”

The sea monster cried and struggled. The basin ground against stone. One of the workers swore aloud; another elbowed him soundly and cast a warning glance toward Yves. Marie-Josèphe giggled behind her hand. Yves was the least likely of priests to notice rough language.

“Slide it down the stairs. Let water flow in—”

The basin bumped down the steps and onto the platform. Yves knelt beside it, unwrapping the net that surrounded it. Overcome by her curiosity, Marie-Josèphe hastened to join him. The silk of her underskirt rustled against the polished laboratory floor, with a sound as soft and smooth as if she were crossing the marble of the Hall of Mirrors.

Before she reached the cage, the tent’s curtains moved aside again. A worker carried a basket of fresh fish and seaweed to the cage, dropped it, and fled. Other workers hauled in ice and a barrel of sawdust.

Her curiosity thwarted, Marie-Josèphe returned to Yves’ specimen. She wanted to open its shroud, but thought better of revealing the creature to the tired, frightened workmen.

“You two, cover the bundle with ice, then cover the ice with sawdust. The rest of you, fetch Father de la Croix’s equipment from the wagons.”

They obeyed, moving the specimen gingerly, for it reeked of preserving spirits and corruption.

Yves will have to carry out his dissection quickly, Marie-Josèphe said to herself. Or he’ll have nothing left to dissect but rotten meat on a skeleton.

Marie-Josèphe had grown used to the smell during years of helping her brother with his explorations and experiments. It bothered her not at all. But the workers breathed in short unhappy gasps, occasionally glancing, frightened, toward Yves and the groaning sea monster.