The Moon and the Sun

by Vonda McIntyre

  “Not as Lucien does.”

  “He loves you more.”

  “I know it, Your Majesty. It doesn’t mean he loves you less. Please, Your Majesty, is he all right?”

  “He lives.”

  “You haven’t—”

  “I’ve done nothing but ferret his men out of my guard. Why should I trouble myself? His body tortures him.”

  “May I see him?”

  “I will see.”

  “Sire, you have the power to show mercy to us all.”

  “You’re even more stubborn than your mother!”

  Marie-Josèphe’s outrage exploded. “She—you—my mother submitted to you entirely!”

  “She refused…”

  Marie-Josèphe watched, in amazement, as his expression grew sad and his eyes filled with tears.

  “She refused everything I wished to give her.” He turned away until he recovered his dispassionate expression. “Come with me. Persuade her to carry out my will.”

  For an eerie moment, Marie-Josèphe thought the King meant to refer to her mother.

  His Holiness stood beside the cage. He sprinkled holy water through the bars. He chanted, in Latin, a rite of exorcism.

  “Cast off your pagan ways,” he said. “Accept the teachings of the Church, and you will receive everlasting life.”

  Sherzad snarled.

  “If you defy me, your soul will never rest.”

  Marie-Josèphe ran to the cage. “Let me in!”

  Agitated, wild, Sherzad swam back and forth. Louis pushed himself from his wheeled chair. The musketeer unlocked the cage. Marie-Josèphe dashed in ahead of the King, oblivious to etiquette or simple manners.

  “Sherzad, be easy, dear Sherzad—”

  “Don’t interfere, Signorina de la Croix,” Innocent said. “You ignore my counsel at your peril!”

  Marie-Josèphe ran down to the platform, while His Majesty remained at the top of the stairs.

  Sherzad saw him. She shrieked.

  “Sherzad, no!”

  The sea woman propelled herself toward Marie-Josèphe. She swam with desperate speed. She launched herself, snarling, her claws extended, straight toward the King. Marie-Josèphe flung herself at Sherzad. They crashed together and fell in a heap. The edge of the stairs knocked the wind out of Marie-Josèphe. Sherzad lay in her arms. Blood poured from a splintery gouge across her forehead. Marie-Josèphe tried to stop the bleeding. Her hands, her dress, turned scarlet.

  “Suicide is a mortal sin,” Innocent said. “She must vow obedience and repent before she dies, or I’ll know her for a demon.”

  Marie-Josèphe looked up at the two men, the holy man who thought Sherzad had tried to kill herself, and the King who must believe she had tried to murder him. Perhaps they were both right.

  Sherzad raised herself and sang furiously. Blood streaked her face. She looked like a monster.

  “What did she say?”

  Marie-Josèphe hesitated.

  “Tell me!”

  “She said—forgive her, Your Majesty—she said, Toothless sharks amuse me. She said, Will a fleet of treasure ships buy my life?”

  “Where?”

  “She’ll tell me—after you free her.”

  “With what assurance?”

  “Mine, Your Majesty.”

  She thought he would dismiss her, call her a thief, accuse her of lying.

  “You do not ask me for leniency? For yourself, for your brother, for your lover?”

  Marie-Josèphe hesitated, then shook her head. “No, Your Majesty.”

  Sherzad thrashed in the basin, splashing water through the net that restrained her. She cried and struggled, smelling the sea, desperate to reach it.

  “Sherzad, dear friend, don’t injure yourself.” Marie-Josèphe worked her hand through the rough mesh so she could touch and comfort the sea woman.

  Marie-Josèphe sat beside Sherzad’s basin, under a canvas canopy on the main deck of His Majesty’s flagship. On the upper deck, the King sat in a velvet armchair, shaded by tapestry. He spoke a word to the captain, who shouted to his men. The sailors burst into activity, preparing the ship to sail.

  The flagship’s skiff cast off from the dock and rowed toward them. Marie-Josèphe whispered encouragement to Sherzad. She tugged her hand free of the net. The skiff came alongside. Lucien, elegant in white satin and gold lace, handed his sword-cane up the side and climbed the ladder to the deck. Marie-Josèphe ran to him; she caught his hands, fine and strong in deerskin gloves. No one would ever guess he had come straight from prison.

  “Lucien, my love—”

  “Pardon me,” he said. He walked unsteadily to the leeward rail and was sick over the side.

  “The ship hasn’t even raised anchor!” Marie-Josèphe said. She brought him some water. He did not drink, but splashed it on his face.

  The anchor cable groaned around the capstan. The sails fell open; the wind whipped them taut.

  “It has now,” Lucien said, and leaned over the side again.

  “My poor friend,” she said. “You’ll feel better soon.”

  “No, I won’t,” Lucien said. The ship rolled a few degrees. He groaned. “I wish I were on the battlefield…in the rain…unhorsed…without my sword. I wish His Majesty had left me in the Bastille.”

  “How can you say that!”

  “Do me the kindness,” he said, “of leaving me alone.”

  On the rough crossing from Martinique, many of Marie-Josèphe’s fellow passengers had been seasick, but none with the marvelous sensitivity of Lucien. The galleon sailed through calm coastal waters with barely enough breeze to make headway, but Lucien’s illness intensified. Marie-Josèphe worried as much about him as she worried about Sherzad. The King showed no sympathy for either of them. Even when the ship sat pitching and yawing at anchor all day while the skiff searched for Sherzad’s rocks, Louis showed no impatience. Marie-Josèphe became convinced that he found malicious enjoyment in stripping Lucien of his position and his blue coat and subjecting him to misery.

  She tried, unsuccessfully, to coax Sherzad to eat a fish; she tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Lucien to drink some broth.

  The captain came to her under her canopy. He bowed.

  “My respects, mamselle, and His Majesty demands your presence.”

  In the King’s luxurious cabin, Marie-Josèphe curtsied.

  “Where is this treasure you promised me?” he said.

  She fancied that the King felt sick because of the ship’s slow erratic dance, and she felt glad of it.

  “Your Majesty, Sherzad can’t see the ocean from the deck. Please free her. If she can hear the ocean properly, she’ll lead me to the right cove.”

  “I will see,” His Majesty said.

  Sometimes he meant it, but all too often he meant to refuse but did not care to say it. It was pointless to try to change his mind. Marie-Josèphe curtsied again. The King turned away, dismissing her.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, pausing in the hatchway. “M. de Chrétien’s of no use to you here. Put him ashore, send him back to Versailles—”

  “Where he has too many friends!” His Majesty exclaimed. “He’ll stay here, in my sight, until you find the treasure.”

  Marie-Josèphe fled. She understood: His Majesty held Lucien hostage to illness on the flagship, he held Yves hostage under guard at the chateau, until Marie-Josèphe succeeded and the King returned safe to his court.

  On deck, she bathed Lucien’s face with a wet cloth.

  “I don’t like you to see me this way,” he said.

  “You saw me after the surgeon bled me,” Marie-Josèphe said. “If I only stand with you during good times, what kind of a friend would I be?”

  He managed to smile. “You’re a friend without boundaries.”

  “And without limits,” she said. She took his hand. As yet, they had done no more than touch each other’s hands. She wondered what would happen when they could do more.

  My heart can hardly beat faster, she th
ought.

  “Are you otherwise recovered?” she asked. “From your extraordinary situation?”

  “There’s something to be said for sea-sickness.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It takes one’s mind off one’s other misfortunes.”

  His Majesty’s guards approached Sherzad’s basin. One carried a musket, another a club. Sailors followed with a net and a coil of rope.

  Marie-Josèphe leaped up. “What are you doing? She enjoys His Majesty’s protection!”

  “It’s His Majesty gave the orders, mamselle,” the lieutenant said. “Stay back, now.”

  “Are you freeing her?” Marie-Josèphe cried, amazed, overwhelmed. “You needn’t threaten her.” She sang to Sherzad, joyously, a simple child’s song. “Lie quiet, Sherzad, as you did when they freed you into the Grand Canal. The King is keeping his word!”

  Sherzad obeyed restlessly. The sailors loosened the net and used it as a sling. Sherzad’s hair was dull and tangled, her eyes sunken, the swellings on her face deflated and venous. Pallor greyed her mahogany skin; her wounds were red and swollen.

  Marie-Josèphe followed Sherzad. The sailors carried her to the bow. Sherzad growled and hummed and trembled.

  “Farewell.” Farewell, she sang, her voice breaking.

  Instead of opening the net, the sailors tightened it, holding Sherzad fast, pinioning her arms, restraining her clawed feet. Sherzad screamed. Marie-Josèphe cried out in protest and seized the net. The mesh ripped her skin.

  A musketeer grabbed her and pulled her away, indifferent to her struggles. Dazed with illness and lack of sustenance, Lucien staggered to his feet and drew his sword. He tripped one of the guards with his cane and stumbled toward Marie-Josèphe.

  The lieutenant aimed his pistol at Marie-Josèphe’s head.

  “Surrender,” he said to Lucien.

  Lucien stopped. He put down his useless sword and raised his hands. A sailor shoved him to the deck. Incredulous, Lucien tried to rise. A cutlass grazed his throat. Marie-Josèphe kicked the lieutenant’s knee. He cursed and flung her down. She crawled toward Sherzad, dizzy from the fall.

  Lucien’s sword-cane rolled across the deck and bumped against Marie-Josèphe’s hand. She snatched it up and scrabbled to her feet, flailing around her with the sword. The musketeers backed away, laughing. She barely noticed the pistol aimed at her.

  “Stop or he dies!” the lieutenant shouted.

  A drop of blood flowed down Lucien’s neck, staining his white shirt.

  Marie-Josèphe and Lucien were overpowered, outnumbered, each held hostage for the other’s safety.

  Marie-Josèphe lowered the sword, defeated and betrayed. In a fury she jerked away when the musketeer took her arm. She could only watch as the sailors slung Sherzad between the arms of the golden figurehead and left her hanging beneath the bowsprit. The guards lowered musket and saber, and allowed Lucien to rise.

  “Now she can see and hear the ocean.” His Majesty took Lucien’s sword from Marie-Josèphe’s hand. “You gave me your parole, M. de Chrétien.” The King grounded the sword’s tip and stamped his boot on the Damascan steel. The sword rebounded. The edge gouged the deck. The King stamped again. His expression grim, he attacked a third time. The steel snapped. Lucien never flinched and never looked away.

  His Majesty flung the handle to the deck, and kicked the broken blade over the side.

  Sherzad hung suspended in the net. The ropes cut cruelly into her breasts and hips; the figurehead’s absurd bosom pressed painfully against her back. The salt spray cleansed and revived her. She opened her mouth to take it onto her tongue, the taste and smell of her home.

  She was dying. She did not want to die.

  She kept her silence all afternoon, refusing to reply to Marie-Josèphe, refusing to direct the ship. As night approached, she sang. Her voice was hoarse and ugly.

  “She agrees! She’ll take us to the cove!” Marie-Josèphe, foolish trusting Marie-Josèphe, interpreted.

  The sun touched the horizon. Sherzad sang, listening to the shape of the sea-bottom as best she could. The wind hesitated, in the moment of calm between day and night, and shifted as dark fell. The ship’s captain argued against sailing blind so close to shore. The toothless shark, the King, commanded him to obey.

  The ship plunged through the water. Sherzad trilled with excitement and fear.

  A jagged stone reached from the sea bottom and seized the ship, grinding along its keel. Timbers crashed and splintered. Sherzad lurched against the net. The rough cables cut her skin.

  But they did not break, they did not free her. The ship hung stranded, the captain shouted in fury, Marie-Josèphe cried out in shock. Sherzad laughed, wild and terrible, ready to die, for her plot had failed.

  They left her hanging before the figurehead as the waning moon followed the sun into the sea.

  29

  MARIE-JOSÈPHE HUDDLED miserably on deck, a blanket around her shoulders. She had tried to persuade Louis that Sherzad had not deliberately run the ship aground. She did not believe it herself, so her protestations only convinced the King she knew what Sherzad had planned.

  What does he expect, she wondered, but betrayal for betrayal?

  One good thing had come of the stranding. As the tide went out and the flagship settled, the groan of insulted timber replaced the erratic pitching. Lucien slept for the first time since the voyage began. His white-gold hair gleamed in the starlight. To Marie-Josèphe’s great relief, the sword cut on his throat was neither deep nor long.

  Nothing had changed. The ship was not badly damaged. The captain said it would float free at high tide.

  And then what? Marie-Josèphe wondered. They’ll never trust Sherzad to guide them, they’ll never trust me. Will they torture her, or kill her, or return her to Versailles and give her to Pope Innocent?

  A quiet song floated through the night. Sherzad sang a lullaby that the sea people sing to their babies.

  Marie-Josèphe matched her voice to Sherzad’s. Dew collected in droplets on the blanket and on her hair and on the ship’s gleaming paint and gilt.

  Nearly asleep, Marie-Josèphe caught herself. She raised her head, fully awake, singing softly.

  The guard near the bow nodded, caught himself, checked his pistol, nodded again. He had orders to shoot Sherzad if she tried to escape. He nodded a third time. He snored.

  Marie-Josèphe slipped from beneath the blanket. She stealthily picked up Lucien’s sword-cane and twisted its handle. The sound of its release was as loud as the crash of the ship against the rock. Yet no one responded.

  She drew the broken blade. A handsbreadth of steel remained, its edge transparently sharp. In her stocking feet, singing the soothing lullaby, Marie-Josèphe crept across the deck. She passed the guard and climbed onto the bowsprit. She crept along it, afraid the rustling of her petticoat, or her awkwardness in her long skirts, would awaken the guard. Sherzad’s song charmed him into sleep. The sea woman’s song enfolded her.

  Sherzad’s eyes gleamed red.

  “Carry my life in your heart,” Marie-Josèphe whispered.

  She slipped the broken blade beneath a cord of the net. The cord parted at the touch of the steel. She cut another cable, and a third. The sword was never meant to slice through cable. The harsh mesh dulled it quickly. She sawed harder. Sherzad grew excited, agitated, writhing, pushing her foot through the hole in the net, tearing at the mesh with her claws. Sherzad’s song faltered and dissolved into a moan. Behind them, the musketeer snorted and woke.

  “No!” he cried.

  Sherzad shrieked in triumph. She burst through the net and tumbled into the sea. A pistol ball screamed past Marie-Josèphe’s ear and sizzled into the water. Marie-Josèphe caught her breath and clutched the broken sword in one hand, the bowsprit in another. She gazed into the darkness, terrified that Sherzad had been hit.

  A splash sprayed Marie-Josèphe’s face with cool salty droplets. Sherzad laughed, cried a challenge, and vanished.

>   The ship creaked and shifted. Marie-Josèphe clung to the bowsprit, shaken, intoxicated.

  “Come onto the deck, Mlle de la Croix.”

  She obeyed the King, crawling backwards, embarrassed that His Majesty and his men could see her legs all the way to her knees. When she reached the deck and turned around, two musketeers held their pistols on her; three sailors stood ready with pikes.

  “Give His Majesty my sword, if you please.” Lucien was bareheaded, unperturbed, wide awake. “Pass it hilt first.”

  Her life, perhaps Lucien’s, depended on capitulation without threat, even with a broken sword. She did as Lucien said. Louis accepted her surrender.

  The sailors led Marie-Josèphe away.

  Shut up in the locker with the slimy seaweed-covered anchor chain, Marie-Josèphe lost track of time. She thought it must be day again, then night; but when the ship shifted and moaned beneath her, she knew it was only dawn.

  Have they left the ship to break up on the rocks? she wondered. She hoped they had taken Lucien away with them. Anyone who disliked the sea so intensely should not have to drown.

  The pumps groaned and rushed. The ship floated free. As the ship settled into the water, Sherzad’s voice travelled through the sea and touched the planks, resounding like a drum. Astonished, overjoyed, Marie-Josèphe replied. Sherzad spoke again, begging her to answer. Hurry, hurry, she cried, I cannot bear to wait for you much longer.

  Desperate, Marie-Josèphe pounded on the bulkhead until her scratched hands bruised.

  The hatch opened. Light poured in, dazzling her.

  “Stop that noise.” The King stood before her. “You’ve exhausted my patience three times over.”

  “Can’t you hear her? I freed her—she’ll keep her promise, she’ll lead me to your treasure.”

  “I hear nothing. She has disappeared.”

  “Shh. Listen.”

  The King listened in skeptical silence. The ship rocked and complained around them; the pumps rumbled. Beneath the noise, Sherzad sang in a delicate low register.

  “She promises. She says, The sand is covered with gold and jewels. She gives them to you, for my sake, despite your betrayals and your broken promises. Afterwards…she declares war on the men of land.”