“Your hands are beautiful.” She sketched, but his rings distracted from the lines. She took his hand, amazed at her boldness — I must be drunker than I thought! she said to herself — and removed one of his rings. The warmth of his fingers caressed her palm. He might as well have caressed her face, her breasts, for heat flushed across her cheeks and her throat.
He submitted to her whim until she touched the sapphire ring set in gold, the one he always wore.
“I never take it off,” he said. “His Majesty gave it to me when I returned to court.”
“Very well,” Marie-Josèphe said, disappointed, for her will could never compete with the King’s. She put his other rings back on his fingers. She closed the drawing box on the music score, and on the unfinished drawing of Count Lucien’s hands.
25
A long line of open carriages drew up around the eastern end of the Grand Canal. His Majesty graciously hosted His Holiness; they rode alone in a carriage magnificently gilded, its sides and wheel-spokes studded with diamonds. It occupied the central spot, with the best view. The royal family and other visiting monarchs flanked the King’s carriage. His Majesty’s courtiers arranged themselves in the second row. Servants hurried among the fantastic carriages, offering wine and pastries, fruit and cheese.
Marie-Josèphe rode in Monsieur’s coach, squeezed between Madame and Mademoiselle, facing Monsieur and the Chevalier de Lorraine. She wished desperately that she were riding Zachi, her afrit. She would gallop away to the pigeon loft and wait for news from the galleon.
In the next coach, with his wife Mme Lucifer, Chartres lounged lazily, exchanging languorous glances with young ladies of the court. He ignored Mlle d’Armagnac and her peacock feathers. Marie-Josèphe supposed he had found another mistress. Chartres noticed Marie-Josèphe’s coldness no more than he responded to Mlle d’Armagnac’s wistful sighs; he had not even noticed, or if he noticed he had not mentioned, that Marie-Josèphe no longer visited his observatory, she never looked into his compound microscope, she never borrowed his beautiful slide rule.
Marie-Josèphe’s coldness to Lorraine provoked him. With every jog of the carriage, he moved his feet closer to hers, till the soles of her shoes pressed back against the riser of the carriage seat. He rubbed his toe against her ankle. At the same time, he whispered to Monsieur and casually slipped his fingers beneath Monsieur’s gold-embroidered coat to caress Monsieur’s thigh.
Madame left off admiring her new diamond bracelet.
“Your feet are too big, M. le chevalier,” Madame said. “Kindly give us a bit of room.” She rapped his knee sharply with her fan. Marie-Josèphe’s love for Madame brought the tears she was fighting close to spilling over. She bit her lip to keep from crying.
“Madame, you wound me — my feet are renowned for their daintiness.” Lorraine drew his feet away from Marie-Josèphe’s ankles. “Perhaps you have my feet confused with another part of my body.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Madame, affronted. “Your tongue, I have no doubt.”
Monsieur gave his wife a glance of amused disbelief. Lorraine for once was speechless. Lotte trembled with laughter repressed as forcibly as Marie-Josèphe’s tears. Blushing, Marie-Josèphe suddenly suspected what Lotte was laughing at, and why she could not laugh aloud. Madame, who serenely feigned ignorance of any second meaning to her comment, would not like to know that Mademoiselle understood it.
“Look at Queen Mary!” Lotte said. She pointed to the carriage of James and Mary, next to His Majesty’s. “She’s a pirate, that woman! Can’t you make dear Haleed give me a few more minutes of her time?”
“If Mme la Reine tries to stand up,” Madame said drily, “she will topple over.”
Mary of Modena wore a headdress impossible in its height and grandiosity. Ribbons and lace spilled down her back and fluttered from wires an armslength above her head. If she were riding in a closed coach it would never fit.
“Mlle Haleed chooses her own commissions,” Marie-Josèphe said apologetically to Lotte. Her brother might refuse to sign the papers, but Marie-Josèphe considered her sister free in name if not in fact.
“Madame the Queen,” Lotte said, “is more generous with her rewards —”
“Generous with His Majesty’s money!” Madame said.
Haleed rode in the Queen’s carriage, bearing her handkerchief. Marie-Josèphe, astonished, could not choose between delight for her sister’s triumph and terror for her risk.
I should be delighted and terrified, Marie-Josèphe thought, for triumph carries risk as certainly as failure.
The footman placed the steps. Marie-Josèphe climbed from Monsieur’s carriage and hurried to the bank of the Grand Canal.
“Sherzad!” she called. She sang to the sea woman. For long minutes she feared Sherzad would not come to her, but finally the sea woman’s tails flicked a spray of water at her feet.
“Sherzad, will you leap for His Majesty?”
Sherzad swam, rolling over and over, her hair streaming around her. Two hundred paces from the end of the canal, she turned and swam toward His Majesty’s coach, speeding at a terrific rate. She leaped, surging from the water. She landed with a tremendous splash. Amazed, the guests exclaimed and applauded.
Marie-Josèphe found Count Lucien, mounted on Zelis and attending His Majesty. She searched for reassurance, for a nod to say the galleon had found Sherzad’s treasure. He met her gaze; grave, he shook his head.
Sherzad leaped and spun in the air, her dark skin catching the evening light. She splashed down, spattering His Majesty.
“Again!” His Majesty exclaimed.
Sherzad leaped again, turning end for end, silhouetted against the sinking red sun and the mass of scarlet and yellow and orange clouds. She dove into the water without a ripple. The sunset reflected from the Grand Canal, turning it into a golden road.
“Again!” His Majesty exclaimed.
Instead of leaping, Sherzad swam to the bank and struggled up, leaning her elbows on the stone rim.
She sang to the King, spilling the beauty of her story and the desperation of her plea into the air between them. Marie-Josèphe listened — watched — with her eyes closed to blot out the canal, the court, the gilded carriages, and her friend Sherzad imprisoned.
Should I interpret? she wondered. Should I tell His Majesty of Sherzad’s family, the beauty and the freedom of the sea, the adventures, her grief for her dead lover?