“Come, sea monster!” she commanded.
The sea monster stopped singing. She snorted and spat and splashed water with her tail from ten feet away. She snarled. She swam no closer.
“You should beat it!” said the musketeer. “Then it would obey.”
“I’d only frighten her,” Marie-Josèphe said. “She’ll not be beaten while she’s in my charge.” She dangled the fish above the water. “Come, sea monster —”
The sea monster kicked a wave toward the platform; it splashed Marie-Josèphe’s shoes and the hem of her riding habit.
The sea monster sang a peremptory phrase, dove, and disappeared.
Why, Marie-Josèphe thought, she’s bored! She’s learned the lesson already, why should she practice it?
Instead of insisting that the sea monster return, Marie-Josèphe let the fish swim free, living prey. But after she had let it loose, she thought, If the sea monster only obeys when she chooses, can I make any claim to have trained it?
The sea monster surfaced, whistling, swimming at a distance. The audience exclaimed. She splashed her tails on the surface. She surged closer to Marie-Josèphe.
Marie-Josèphe rose. “You may have more fish later, if you come when I call.” On a foolish whim she added, “And an extra portion if you show yourself again to the visitors!” She smiled to herself, and thought, If only creatures really were so easy to train.
Lucien climbed the great stone staircase to Mme de Maintenon’s apartment. Forced blooms glowed with fresh spring colors in gilded pots.
The guard opened one side of the double doors and bowed Lucien through Mme de Maintenon’s doorway.
Mme de Maintenon furnished her apartment as austerely as a cell in a convent. No matter what gifts His Majesty lavished on her, she lived among drab colors. She refused flowers and jewels alike. Even His Majesty’s council table was plain black lacquer with the most moderate gilt and inlay.
Lucien shrugged off the uneasiness that enclosed him in these rooms. He could do nothing about the darkness, the drabness, or Mme de Maintenon’s dislike of him, except to refuse to allow any of it to afflict him.
A single spot of color brightened the room: a gleaming tapestry covered Mme de Maintenon’s lap. Embroidered silk fell in thick soft folds like the fabric in a great master’s canvas. Gold couching and intricate embroidery in red and orange and yellow, the colors of fire, covered all the silk but the central section.
Despite the room’s close atmosphere, Mme de Maintenon nestled in her cushioned wicker chair, shielded from drafts by its woven sides. She placed careful stitches, covering the last bit of white with the colors of blood and sunlight.
Mme de Maintenon retained the exquisite complexion and the dark lustrous eyes that had made her a great beauty in her youth, but she had accepted age and increasing infirmity as Louis had not.
Lucien bowed. “Mme de Maintenon.” He made it a matter of pride, even of arrogance, to speak to her always in a friendly and respectful manner. No matter what the provocation, no matter what opportunities she offered him — few enough, at that; she was no fool — he resisted exercising his wit against her. “I trust you’re well.”
“Well enough to do good works, sir,” she said. “The ache of one’s bones makes no difference there.”
She did not ask after his health or his family. She never did; and she had never, in his memory, spoken his title. No one else of his acquaintance found any irony in applying the title Count de Chrétien to an atheist.
“Winter approaches,” she said softly, “and people will starve — but His Majesty spends the summer making war and the autumn creating entertainments. Oh — forgive me for mentioning my distress, you would not understand it.” She bent again to her embroidery.
Lucien regarded her with irritation and sympathy. She knew nothing of what he understood or believed; she never deigned to find out, for she knew what any atheist must think. The whole glorious autumn stretched ahead, yet she anticipated winter.
He wanted to say to her, Madame Scarron, was your life with your crippled late husband so dreadful? Did M. Scarron never spend a moment attending to your pleasure, or amusing you with his celebrated wit? If his infirmities prevented him from pleasuring you, could you find no moment of satisfaction in distracting him from his pain? Are you punishing my cherished sovereign in return?
But he did not say it; he would never say it. Not to the wife of his King.
“You are engaged in an intricate task,” he said, with a pang of unaccustomed wistfulness. The Queen used to embroider constantly — he treasured a handkerchief she had given him, though it was so covered with silk flowers that it was useless — for, in truth, the sweet sad foolish lady had no occupation, no place at her husband’s court.
“It is a gift,” Mme de Maintenon said softly. She smoothed the white silk. She held it up for him to see.
People in torment writhed across satin. A man screamed from the rack; blood flowed from a woman’s entrails as an Inquisitor drew her bowels from her body. The central figure, a wild-eyed man in Medieval garb, twisted against the stake, flesh burning in the splash of scarlet silken flames.
Lucien inspected it without reacting. “Free-thinkers, libertines, and dangerous heretics all.”
“My girls at Saint-Cyr embroidered it.”
“Strong images, madame, to inflict upon schoolgirls.”
“Exactly — strong, and instructive. While they worked, they considered heresy, and disobedience, and its consequences. I must finish it quickly.” She bent to the embroidery again, placing another scarlet stitch of fire. “I usually do the eyes last. For this image I did them first.” She plunged the needle into the cloth. “This is Éon de l’Étoile. Arch-heretic, the Leader of Satan’s Army.”
“He was never burned,” Lucien said.
“Indeed, surely, he must have been. He made war upon the Church, he plundered monasteries, he called himself God’s son —”
“He fed the peasants with the riches of the Church.”
“Riches he obtained by thievery and murder.”
“The Church imprisoned him, and he died,” Lucien said. L’Étoile had, of course, been a madman. “His followers never denounced him. They were burned — but he was not.”
“I resign the field in favor of your intimate knowledge of a pagan land.” Mme de Maintenon fixed another flame at l’Étoile’s feet. “No matter. He should have been burned.”