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“Where’s the token?” Louis ignored both Lorraine and Count Lucien. “The token she wishes to give to her mate?”
The sea woman snarled. Marie-Josèphe winced, shocked by the reply: shocked, but not surprised. She hesitated, hoping in vain that she would not have to lie.
“Your Majesty, someone took it.”
“Who?”
“One — one of the sailors.”
The sea woman protested, thrashing her tails, splashing Marie-Josèphe’s back with cold fetid water.
“Your Majesty, isn’t this proof that she talks to me? I have no other way of knowing about her token.”
“Dear foolish child,” Louis said, “I have no way of knowing the token ever existed.” He gazed at her sadly. His next words, she knew, would be a death sentence.
“Don’t kill it,” a visitor whispered from the back of the tent. Other commoners took up the refrain: Don’t kill it, don’t kill it. His Majesty’s brow clouded. Marie-Josèphe wanted to cry to the visitors, Don’t you know, His Majesty cannot be cajoled or threatened? With all goodwill, the spectators only made things worse. A musketeer strode toward the disturbance; the whispers stopped.
“You’re most clever,” His Majesty said to Marie-Josèphe, “trying to save your pet by making it into Scheherazade.”
His Majesty’s courtiers laughed, all but Count Lucien.
“One Thousand and One Ocean Nights, by Scheherazade the Sea Monster!” Chartres cried.
The sea woman clambered past Marie-Josèphe, dragging herself to the top of the stairs. She glared at the King.
“Shhhhrrrzzzzaaddddd,” she snarled.
“The clever Mlle de la Croix has taught it to talk!” Lorraine exclaimed. “Though not as well as a parrot.”
Monsieur laughed. “Sherzad the parrot!”
“The myth requires —” His Majesty said.
The laughter ended.
“— that I allow it to live for another day.”
In amazement, in desperate gratitude, Marie-Josèphe flung herself at the King’s feet and kissed the cold hard diamonds at the hem of his coat. He brushed his fingertips over her hair.
His Majesty left the tent, walking as strongly as if he had never been afflicted with gout. Innocent and his attendants accompanied him. The courtiers followed. The visitors cheered His Majesty as if their protests had had something to do with his decision.
“Let us have another sea monster story, mamselle!” shouted one of the spectators when His Majesty had left.
Cries of approval and agreement surrounded her in an opaque cloud of noise. They threatened to overwhelm her. Count Lucien grasped Marie-Josèphe’s elbow.
“Are you quite well?”
She was too faint with exhaustion and relief to get to her feet. Count Lucien pushed her sleeve above her wrist. The swelling had vanished, and the streaks had receded.
Marie-Josèphe drew back, for his touch made her tremble.
“Will he spare her?” she whispered.
“I cannot say. This is a reprieve.”
“A day...”
“Anything can happen in a day.”
Yves slipped away from the other courtiers. Agitation gripped him. If anyone saw him, they would surely send him to the madhouse. His eyes must be staring, white-rimmed; his hair must be wild as a hermit’s. He gripped the ring in his pocket. The gold burned patterns into his flesh.
He left the Green Carpet, where the courtiers attending the King were likely to see him. He strode past the Obelisk, up the hill, into the Star Garden.
He ran, his heart pounding, through the Circle.
He stumbled, panting, into the chapel. It was, of course, deserted. At the altar, before the image of the Crucifixion, he fell. He shuddered, holding back sobs till his chest and his throat ached with unshed tears. The world spun around him as if he were drunk. He lost all track of time.
Lying prone, his burning hand pressed to the cool marble floor, Yves de la Croix prayed.
21
Sherzad sang.
The sea woman’s images spun around Marie-Josèphe, a waterspout of mirages. Sea people sunbathed on a small sandy island. The sea stretched around it without interruption. The sea people, safe and happy, played with their family’s new child. The baby’s hand had begun to grow its webs, her toenails to thicken and withdraw into claws. Her hair was as soft as spume. She hummed and babbled, creating large amorphous pictures. Her mama, her sisters and brothers and cousins, her aunts and uncles, exclaimed with wonder and approval.
“On our birth islands, we are vulnerable, but we believed ourselves safe.”
Marie-Josèphe interpreted as well as she could, from a language with no words. She sketched rapidly as she spoke. The charcoal scribbles did no justice to the beauty of Sherzad’s songs, but they documented the story. Servants took the finished sketches, displayed them, pinned them up.
“We were not safe.”
A galleon appeared on the horizon. A cross blazed from its flag. Sherzad’s song broke into discord. The galleon’s cannons thrust through its gunports.
“The ships of the men of land sought us.”
The galleon came about, presenting its broadside to the tiny birth island. The cannons fired in a horrible rolling roar. Sherzad screamed in grief and pain. Men stormed the island with pikes and nets.
“They called us devils. They killed and captured us, for the glory of your god.”
Lucien heard again the sound of battle in the sea woman’s songs. He heard the screams of dying men and horses. Exhilaration took him like strong wine; despair overcame it. Sherzad’s song brought back Steenkirk, and Neerwinden.
“They took us to the mainland, to cities, they imprisoned us and tortured us, they killed us slowly.”
In Marie-Josèphe’s sketch, an Inquisitor shattered a man of the sea on the rack. In the background, a human figure burned at the stake.
Lucien heard again the catcalls of his youth, the other pages at court tormenting him: Dwarf, dwarf! Your papa is a devil and your mama is a witch!
They never stopped, until he earned the King’s esteem.
“The men of land went truly mad. They killed us, they killed their own people.”
The Church sought evidence of fornication between women and the sea demons. What it sought, it found. It condemned any woman with a dwarf child, for the child was pure proof of congress with the devil.
“The sea people knew the men of land as enemies.”
Marie-Josèphe stared in horror at her sketch: a woman broken on the wheel and thrown into the sea, her dwarf child holding tight, sinking with her, drowning. The servant took the drawing away before she could stop him.
